


Sussing for Truffles

by Prodigal_anon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Depression, Gen, Implied Destiel - Freeform, Michigan, Resurrection, implied Sevin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 06:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5237984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prodigal_anon/pseuds/Prodigal_anon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in an alternate Season 10 (spoilers up to that point).  Kevin Tran and Gabriel have been dragged back from the dead, but have a lot of soul-searching to do to figure out what to do next.  Kevin wanders his home state of Michigan in search of purpose, while Gabriel alternates tropical massages with hiding on the moon while he figures himself out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sussing for Truffles

Illustrations by the lovely and talented [amberdreams](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/366000.html)  :)

\-------------------

Gabriel has homes, plural.   
  
They’re scattered around the globe and in different timelines, some embedded as part of the community or environment around them, and others in isolated bubbles, where the view out the window is all there is to be seen of the world outside.  
  
He has a villa in Tuscany and an apartment in Manhattan.  He has a treehouse in the Amazon, and a houseboat floating in the Ha Long Bay.  He has a posh home in Morocco and a shack in central Australia.  He keeps ordinary houses for ordinary identities in beach towns in Honduras, Turkey, and Namibia.  There are also his private hideaways in Antarctica, the Marianas Trench, and the dark side of the moon, but those are mostly for sulking.  No matter what Dean says, Gabriel doesn’t spend a lot of time sulking.  He prefers to live it up.  
  
He has one very boring, easily forgettable house in Lebanon, Kansas, that exactly zero people know about.  
  
With all these locations to choose from, it can’t be too surprising for the Bunker Gang that he doesn’t spend much time in their underground hangout.  Gabriel has had millennia to cultivate these identities and to get attached to the places and affiliated communities.  It simply can’t be expected that he’d ditch his homes entirely just because he’s sort-of joined Team Free Will and gotten the bracelet and T-shirt.  He shows up sometimes when they pray, if they sound sufficiently desperate, and when he’s bored and feels like stirring the pot.  
  
He comes back for Kevin’s birthday.  
  
It’s almost December when Linda Tran prays to him, asking if he will extend his archangelic protection to them for the occasion so that they can all go to the Double JJ Resort in Michigan – what had been a Tran Tradition for the kid’s birthday, before the demons and the leviathans and angels and Winchesters had entered their lives with all that unpleasantness.  There’s an indoor waterpark, she prays enticingly.  
  
And so Kevin gets surprised on his 20th birthday (technically he’s older, but the time he’s spent dead doesn’t count, according to the Winchesters, and Gabriel guesses they’d know the protocol by now), with a trip to the Double JJ Resort in Rothbury, Michigan, where they all have a blast.  Gabriel rounds up the Bunker Gang to join and the surprised delight on Kevin’s face is so beautiful and rare, lighting up the boy’s features, that it’s hard for the archangel not to stare.  But the birthday boy and his party get the waterpark, the rented log cabins, the snow tubing, the horseback riding and unlimited hot cocoa and balloon animals, and not one single demon or other nasty shows up to bother them.  Gabriel makes sure of it.  
  
He takes off afterwards and doesn’t return again until the next time he’s needed – to rescue Sam and Kevin from a wendigo - and the startled grin on Kevin’s face when the wendigo abruptly transforms into one of the balloon animals from the party, makes Gabriel’s day.  
  
The next time he shows up uninvited, to hand Kevin a travel brochure describing the town in Tuscany where Gabriel’s villa is located.   
  
“If you feel like taking your mom somewhere nice for her birthday,” he says, snapping his gum as though he doesn’t care, whatever.   
  
Kevin looks up at him in disbelief, the beginnings of that shy smile starting, and okay, Gabriel’s gonna start keeping a tally of that.  
  
\--------  
  
He’d been the one to resurrect Kevin, actually, though he’d never formally admitted it and never will.  
  
Castiel knows, and the Winchesters as good as know, and probably others suspect, but all of them have the good sense not to say anything.  Kevin himself doesn’t really know for certain what happened, and Gabriel has no plans to tell him.  
  
It had been an obligation at the time, a chore, part of the clean-up of Metatron’s delightful fuckery, among other disasters.  
  
Once the word had gotten out that Gabriel was alive again (another miracle that Gabriel has no plans to open for discussion) everyone had immediately started whining and complaining that as the single most powerful being in existence that was still walking free, it was his job to fix things.  Gabriel had bristled at this and snapped his fingers a few times to shut them up, then took off to the moon to sulk.  
  
There was a general assault of prayer from the humans and imploring from the angels (and even a few demons who had reason to want his interference) but he tuned it out as easily as he has for millennia.  He’d ignored the prayers of frustration that turned to anger, and carried on sulking.  Gabriel wasn’t the one who’d fucked everything up.  That honor belonged to – let’s see here – Dad, Mike, Luci, Cas, Metatron, Crowley, the damn Winchesters, Naomi, really pretty much every one of his brothers and sisters, a bunch of demons, a bunch of reapers, etc etc, the list went on, and the only one who wasn’t on it was laissez-faire Gabriel who’d been doing nothing at all but dishing out small-scale justice for centuries.  
  
Gabriel had only just gotten back from being dead and now everyone wants him to clean up after them, undo their fuckups and presumably take the helm on overseeing things on Heaven and Earth.  Which is pure, grade-A baloney. (A little saying floats through his head, that if you save a man’s life, you are responsible for him forever.  The fucking Elysian Fields was supposed to be his noble sacrifice but somehow it had been the impetus for a massive burden of duty.)  
  
After a while of watching small chunks of space rock thunk soundlessly onto the surface of the moon, he’d received one prayer that made him listen – Sam Winchester wanted a drink.  Nothing more, the little demon-blooded gigantor had insisted, no pressure, he just really needed a drink, preferably somewhere scenic, before he lost his mind in here.  “In here” presumably being the bunker.  
  
There’s always been a soft spot in his heart for the younger Winchester, in spite of the abuse he’d put the kid through, and so Gabriel had snapped them to his condo in the Florida Keys and produced drink after drink while Sam managed to do what none of the others did.  In the man’s outpouring of grief and stress and desperate need to do something good, Gabriel finally bowed to the inevitability of it all.    
  
Since his death, so much had happened that he’d been dimly aware of.  The Winchesters’ failed respective attempts to live a clean life, Sam’s continued misadventures with Lucifer and Hell – everyone was having continued misadventures with Hell, it seemed – that poor chump Gadreel, and Metatron’s entire bullshit (which made Gabriel do an actual spit-take in surprise and annoyance), the Mark and how it frayed both the brothers… Sam was exhausted and as the drinking went on, he nearly wept as he confessed that none of them knew what they were doing, that every time they tried to fix something, they made it worse, and he was truly afraid of how it would end.  His fear for his brother was what drove him to beg Gabriel for the drink, and by the time Sam was passed out on the couch, Gabriel could see as plain as day that he couldn’t keep escaping his responsibilities.  He’d drawn a dick on Sam’s unconscious face and transported him to a hotel room in Lebanon before taking off again.  
  
Gabriel had next created a new headquarters for himself – in a pocket universe that can only be accessed from within his shack in central Australia, and only then if you speak a certain line from a certain movie and you have to do the accent right.  He’s modeled the actual buildings within the pocket universe after the grounds of a palace, in the kingdom of Ayutthaya, where a few centuries ago he’d played at being a lady’s maid to one the consort princesses.  It was (and now is, again) a beautiful place, in the way that human efforts sometimes are– taking the resources God gave them and creating with it.  The gardens are elaborate, with large tropical flowers visible from anywhere, hanging over pools and small gazebos and walkways.  Birds chatter in the background, occasionally revealing themselves as splashes of color, particularly at the places where one might feed them.    
  
Having established this outpost, Gabriel had then considered what to do next.    
  
\-----------  
  
Kevin’s spent... time, wandering the Veil.  He doesn’t really know how long it’s been.  Sometimes he’s back with his mother and she tells him, but then he forgets and it doesn’t really mean anything anyway.  Time doesn’t mean much in the Veil.  
  
He wanders.  He passes other souls – no one familiar to him.  He’s lonely sometimes and wishes there was someone there that he could wander with, but maybe it’s for the best.  The other souls there start to lose themselves after a while, going mad and attacking one another and becoming less human over time.  Kevin wouldn’t want to watch it happen to anyone he knows.  
  
He tries to visit his mother sometimes, but not very often.  He tells her it’s difficult, that it takes energy and makes him tired, and it’s true, but not the whole truth.  It’s actually a lot easier now that she has his father’s ring – it gives him two anchors to locate and use to pull him through to other side.  But the reality is that when he goes, the frustration he feels at his situation, at being so close to her and to life but unable to touch it, is frightening. The frustration turns to rage and it changes him, he can feel it happening, and the odds are that it’s him gradually becoming a vengeful ghost.  He doesn’t know if it’s obvious to her or not, but he avoids it all the same.  
  
Demons are regular visitors.  Kevin can see their true faces now, and the hellhounds that often travel with them.  Seeing them fills him with indescribable dread and fear, sending him running to hide.  He seems to run into them everywhere, and he wonders if his soul is still blazing like a beacon, or drawing them to him.  They haven’t seen him yet but he doesn’t know how long he’ll be able to keep running.  This could be his eternity, running nowhere in the Veil from demons forever, like his year hiding in abandoned houses on Earth but worse because he can see their faces now.  
  
After a while, whenever Kevin sits down to rest somewhere, he starts reliving the details of his death, like he’s there experiencing it all over again.  He sits in the bunker, reviewing his notes, and Sam walks in, places his hand on Kevin’s face and then for one instant, so brief he couldn’t even realize it at the time and only realizes it now because he’s been reliving it more and more times – for one instant, Kevin can see the angel wrapped and twisted in and around Sam’s body, blinding and terrible and hauntingly beautiful and blue(?), eyes and light and flames and swords and a powerful force trained on Kevin, and then pain more excruciating than Kevin is even able to comprehend and then he’s either back to sitting at his place in the bunker again, ready for another round; or it’ll be over for now and he’s sitting in the grayness of the Veil, surrounded by others who are screaming or weeping or pacing or sitting quietly staring at nothing.  
  
Sam.  Sam and Dean, and Meg and Cas… he doesn’t want to think of them, because their lies and the way they used him and discarded him make him angry and the rage builds up quickly here.  He doesn’t want to think about his mom or Channing because it makes him sad and the sorrow turns quickly into a depression that leaves him staring into space for – days?   Weeks?   
  
He thinks of Garth more than anyone else.  Garth was kind and funny and good.  Even if his boat was a piece of shit.  
  
At some point, the demons begin acting agitated when he sees them.  He doesn’t really think about it.  Maybe it’s some part of the endless bullshit that goes on between Heaven, Hell and Earth.  And Purgatory and the Veil and whatever else there is that Kevin really doesn’t care about anymore.  But the demons’ agitation happens often.  They’ll look tense, then start yelling and scatter and usually by then Kevin’s somewhere else as well.   
  
It’s immediately after reviewing his death for the billionth time that he finally figures out why.  
  
He’s gone through the whole thing a few dozen times, this session - the bunker, Sam, the angel – and is sitting numbly on the ground, recovering, when suddenly he hears, for lack of a better word, a voice.  
  
 _Huh,_ the voice says.   _Gadreel looked pretty chewed over._  
  
Kevin looks up and is pierced with horror.  Coming fresh on the heels reliving his death,  it’s obvious the difference – this creature is not the one that had been inhabiting Sam’s body – but it’s worse.  The first creature was thinner as well, and more ragged-looking, while this one is tremendous, everything the first was, but so much more.   
  
It’s enormous beyond description, unencumbered by a vessel as the other angel was, towering over and around Kevin in all directions.  It's similar but distinct - as before, there’s blue and gold and eyes and swords and flames, but this one seems - mightier, somehow, more perfect and - awesome, in the original sense of the word.  The gaze of the thousands of eyes is more direct and it - sings, in a voice like bells and hundreds of voices combined, a constant pulse of noise, humming as it watches him.  It’s more terrifying by far than the one before, by way of its immense power alone.  
  
Kevin gapes helplessly, unable to take it all in as it remains there, looking at him, all that power and intent trained directly on him.  He half-gets up, muscles directed by a primal urge to flee and hide, and almost instantly he's engulfed by it, wrapped up all around by the flames and colors and singing, caught up firmly.  
  
 _Nuh-uh,_ says the voice.   _Stay put.  You were freaking hard to pin down, mini-prophet._  
  
Kevin's blindly panicking, wheezing for air, except he doesn't need air because he's dead.  He thrashes around but it's hopeless, because the angel has him tight in its grip.  He cries instead, sobbing violently, closing his eyes to try to not see the beautiful and terrible creature that has him.  
  
There's a touch to his forehead and he screams - this is how he died before, this is how he died, he's dying again-   
  
_Hey, relax._  The voice sounds at once soothing and impossibly distant as a light and heat permeates his skull.   _Peace.  It's going to be all right._  
  
The light sears through him, burning him, spreading through his body.   
  
_Welcome back to the land of the living, kiddo._  
  
\----------  
  
The prophet’s resurrection happens in a town in Michigan, a few miles from the sand dunes on the shores of the large lake to the west.  Kevin’s soul is drawn there, tied to the ring in his mother’s possession in the home where he’d grown up.  Invisible, Gabriel watches as a sobbing Linda Tran subjects her son to tests, admirably thorough given the emotional upheaval.  Gabriel takes to the sky and patrols the house when the tests are completed and Kevin is finally truly reunited with his mother, unaware that there was any such creature as Gabriel involved.  The archangel declines to watch the weeping and desperate embraces – another time, he might have enjoyed watching the proof that humanity had been worth dying for, but for now the fragility of the scene only depresses him.  
  
And anyway, his thoughts are already ahead of this moment.  He’s going to need to put this prophet to work fairly soon.  Not that he really has any idea what the kid should do; he only supposes that if there’s a Will to work with, some intention leftover from his Father’s work, the prophet will suss it out eventually.  Like one of those pigs, nosing through forests in France for rare truffles.  Gabriel might see about looking up more of the dormant prophets later, just to know where they are, but for now, this one seems like the best choice, having connections to the annoying-but-admittedly-knowledgeable-and-sometimes-useful Winchesters and their angel groupie.

  
He does wish he’d paid more attention to the previous prophet.  Obviously, before, he couldn’t approach the man, guarded as he’d been by Raphael and under observation by countless other angels.  Gabriel hadn’t gone incognito as long as he had to trip up just because one of the prophets raised his suspicions.

No, he’d saved that trip-up for a pair of sad puppy eyes and a mouthy smirk, both clad in blue jeans and plaid.  Damn Winchesters anyway.  
  
But Gabriel had been aware of that last prophet, like he’d been aware of every other prophet before, like he’s constantly aware of this little Tran prophet now, in the back of his mind.  It’s just that the last one, Chuck Shurley, had felt different.  Maybe Gabriel will go hunting down Shurley’s soul later.  See if there’s anything useful to be gotten out of that.  
  
As he breezes around the coast of west Michigan, keeping watch over the small house containing the prophet, he also keeps an eye out for demons within around ten miles of where the resurrection has occurred.  There are three, which is two more than he would have expected out here in the sticks, and he strikes down all of them, leaving only a smear on the ground and a story for the tabloids.  
  
\-----------  
  
Kevin and his mom talk for a long, long time.  They don’t run out of things to say, maybe they’ll never run out of things to say again, but Kevin runs out of steam after a while.  He hasn’t been in the practice of talking to anyone at length for a long time, and the effort of forming and hearing words tires him.    
  
He goes to his old room and is unsurprised, saddened, and happy all at the same time to see that it’s in the same condition it had been when he’d last lived in this house.  Exhausted, he collapses on the bed, but doesn’t fall asleep until his mom starts talking on the phone to someone in the hall.  The familiarity of that gesture – and the knowledge that she’s certainly peering in every few minutes to make sure he’s really still there - finally puts him to sleep.  
  
When he wakes, he doesn’t get up immediately.  She’d asked him what he remembers, after it was already apparent that he remembers very little.    
  
Still lying in bed, Kevin tries again to remember what he can.  There are only impressions.  He’d been angry, far more angry than afraid.  He’d died – over and over, like in a dream, where he was perfectly all right again as soon as he died.  Demons were there, he’s sure of that, but not what they were doing, or what they did to him.  Had he been in Hell?  Mom said he’d been a ghost in the Veil.  He doesn’t remember.  
  
He remembers – blue?  A lot of blue.  And some kind of music, maybe?  It’s all a mess, of maybe memories and maybe hallucinations and maybe nothing at all.    
  
Kevin and his mom couldn’t agree last night whether or not to go directly to the Winchesters with their questions.  Mom had thought they were basically trustworthy, even Cas, and they were certainly likely to have some knowledge of what was happening and what to do about it… but, here was something new that he didn’t have a memory for, but he now had a powerful and unexplained terror of Sam Winchester, making his heart freeze up whenever the man’s face flashed through his brain for any reason.  
  
He doesn’t know why.  He gets the impression that Mom might know but he doesn’t want to ask.  There’s no question that there’s a reason for it – such a strong feeling couldn’t come out of nowhere at random.  And in light of everything else, it seems pretty probable that it was related in some way to his being dead.    
  
Dead.  He’d been dead.  Right?  Was that real?  Is any of this real?  Is he still stuck in a hallucination somewhere, hiding in the bunker, waiting for Sam and Dean to come back from a hunt?  
  
He drags himself out of bed and down the stairs, strongly tempted by the smell of coffee, but ultimately refusing it because one area where his memory is working perfectly fine is in recalling endless days/nights/whatever in the bunker, drinking coffee desperately while translating the tablet, always trying to translate the tablet…  
  
They’ve been in a conversation, apparently, Kevin and his mom, and she’s waiting for an answer.  He shrugs helplessly at her.  “Sorry, Mom, I’m just… kinda… out of it.”  
  
She nods, pursing her lips worriedly, and a half hour later they’re in the car driving, though he refuses to get in until she promises him they aren’t going to see Sam.  
  
Kevin doesn’t notice they’d pulled up alongside a curb in – Pentwater, it looked like.  A small, pleasant town about a half hour northwest of Neighbor.  On the village green – they call it that unironically, and it’s actually used for community gatherings still – a farmer’s market is spread out.  Attendance is a little lackluster today, because the sky is overcast and the tourists haven’t arrived in the area yet.  Out on the lake, just beyond the green, a couple of enterprising boats sail out in spite of the weather.  
  
His mom gently guides Kevin towards the market, where he acts on a kind of muscle memory.  He buys a woven basket for no reason at all.  Or rather, he directs his mother to buy it, and she does, because Kevin has no money yet.  Perhaps in order to justify the purchase, they fill the basket up with stuff: vegetables, foraged mushrooms, handmade pasta, individual strawberry-rhubarb fruit pies for each of them.  Kevin browses the coolers containing venison, beef, pork, chicken, and fish caught from the lake nearby, earning a quick look from his mother.  Right.  He’d been vegan, before.    
  
He walks past the meat stand, also bypassing the stand with homemade honey and beeswax.  
  
Ideally, they should be going straight home with their fresh produce, but Mom doesn’t make the familiar turn on the road, instead heading along the coast towards the park at Silver Lake.  They drive through mixed farmland and forest to get there, which effectively sums up Kevin’s memory of the area.  Cows and trees.  
  
When they get there, Mom pays their entry and they head straight back for the dunes.  She asks if he wants to rent an off-road vehicle, to go tearing up and down the dunes, even though he knows she’s always hated the ORVs.  He declines and they wander instead along the sand, gazing out over the open water with no opposite coastline in sight.    
  
It’s cold-ish in Michigan in spring, and they mostly have the beach to themselves.  The yellow-white sand squeaks underfoot; the dune grass scratches and nicks their skin in a mild way.  The water laps at the beach tirelessly. It’s a little muddier than usual, due to the season, but he can still see the bottom clearly enough.  A few of the white-and-grey gulls spot them and zoom over, making their mournful calls as they follow the pair, begging shamelessly for food.  Back in second grade, Kevin’s school class had made a trip here, learning about the ecosystem and the plants and animals that lived here.  He’d even known the type of sand it was that was unique to this beach.  He wonders if the nature center, back near registration, would have any pamphlets.  
  
Kevin hadn’t realized how much he’d missed being here until he was gone.  He wonders if he’d miss it as much if he’d gone off to one of the colleges on the coast he’d applied to, or if this nostalgia is particularly poignant because of… everything else.  
  
In any case, while he knows that this little day trip has resolved nothing, it still has infused him with a little more energy.  In a way, it’s nice to see that things do carry on, even when you’re dead.  Farmer’s markets and trees and cows and sand dunes and life itself still exists in the face of the wars between angels and demons other ancient supernatural beings.  
  
\-------  
  
It looks as though the prophet and his mother are safely in the house for the night, and since Gabriel had done his pest extermination earlier, he feels free to take off and leave them for now.  
  
His first inclination is to return to his nice new headquarters and he does so, but he has nothing more to accomplish there than he had before.    
  
The attractive young men and women he’d created to populate the place know how to give a good massage, though, complete with the happy ending.  There’s a lot more variety on the basic human model here than there would have been in Ayutthaya back in the day – one of the benefits of creating pocket universes is improving upon the original.  Gabriel feels that the diversity of shapes and colors available in humanity is one of God’s better ideas.  There’s no human aesthetic that doesn’t please him.  His current little flock includes a matching pair of dark-haired young men with pretty green eyes, a tall young woman with dark skin that almost glows when the light strikes it, the requisite blonde with perfect breasts, as well as a few slender Southeast Asian types of either gender that wear the garments of the actual time period.  They also use oils and enjoy foods with him that weren’t available at that time because why not?  This place is for him.  

He indulges a while before leaving again, with no good idea where to go next.  Maybe it’s time to start spying on the old gang again, to see what they’re up to when they’re not bitching at him to fix their stupid shit.  He’d meant to do that right away but of course, he’d been chased into hiding right off the bat.  
  
He checks out the new de-facto leader of heaven, which appears to be Hannah.  Maybe.  It’s not clear.  If it is her, it’s not too poor a choice, although not what he would have guessed.  Actually, the current layout of the Host of Heaven looks a little frazzled and chaotic, to Gabriel’s admittedly inexpert eye.  Maybe this is just what free rein looks like to angels.    

He decides there isn’t anything of value to be learned here in Heaven, and he doesn’t dare stick around long enough to be caught.  So he skips back down to Earth and seeks out others, only to find that most of the guys he thought he could find are dead or gone.    
  
Anael, Uriel, Hael, Balthazar, Hester… Tessa the Reaper, that’s a bummer, she was hot.  Earnest little Samandriel.  Possibly Inias, even pain-in-the-ass Zachariah and ball-busting Naomi.  Raphael, his brother.  And so many others.  All gone.  No sign of Joshua, which could be a good thing, actually.  No news being good news and all.  But damn.  All those angels he’d known…  
  
Well, Gabriel had burned his bridges a long time ago.  No use mourning them now.    
  
But!  It sounds like Metatron had got what was coming to him, anyway, which is cool.  He’d always been a pretty annoying little shit..  Gabriel’s still a little unclear on what exactly had happened.  Something about a new world order in Heaven, kicking everyone out, and using the chump Gadreel to do it.  Which explains the little home movie Gabriel had been witness to, when he’d found the prophet, with Gadreel taking over Sam to kill Kevin to gain Metatron’s favor.  Metatron, of all the assholes.  Poor kid.  Poor Gadreel, too.  What a fuck-up.    
  
Still, interesting though it was to hear the gossip and start a tally of dead angels… Gabriel’s still at a loss as to what he should actually be doing.  He isn’t terribly interested in wresting power from the equally directionless remainders of the Host, but something’s gotta happen.  
  
Well, what needs to happen is for this prophet to start propheting.  Suss out those truffles of God’s will.  Maybe Gabriel needs to check in on the little guy.  Light a fire under his ass if necessary.  
  
\--------  
  
At first Kevin worries that the pop factory might have disappeared off the face of the earth – it had been nearly impossible to find, even on Google – but here it is.  There’s a different logo than he remembered when he was a kid, but it’s the same place, all right.  He goes in, pays the fee and gets a stamp on his hand, and wanders in.  
  
A girl his age is giving the tour, explaining the history of the bottling company, and doing a great job of not looking bored out of her mind.  Kevin tries not to stare at her, fascinated by the idea that this could have been him, maybe, working a part-time job to earn extra cash while he goes to college nearby.    
  
The hope is so dangerous that he doesn’t even want to acknowledge it, but it’s there:  maybe this could be him, again.  Maybe.  Kevin’s been resurrected and he doesn’t know why, but there’s a conspicuous lack of angels or demons or leviathans or Winchesters swarming around him, making demands.  He hasn’t had any headaches, no powerful compulsions to run to another state and start translating shit.  Granted, it’s been less than a week, but – but maybe.  Maybe it’s over.    
  
He could be the bored guy wearing a dweeby outfit and walking local tourists through a pop bottling factory.  He could put up with it, knowing that it would help him pay for an apartment off-campus and eat something nicer than ramen, knowing that in only a few short years he’d have his degree and be contributing to humanity, in a real way.  It seems possible.    
  
\--------  
  
Gabriel waits until the demon that had been stalking along behind the prophet is blocked from view before zapping it.  This is the twelfth one since the prophet had driven down to the city of Holland.  Gabriel had thought maybe something is finally about to happen, some sign at last of God’s Will, but no, the little shit just wants to visit a soda factory for some stupid reason.    
  
The archangel watches the smoky mark on the ground as it fades from existence, and makes a noise of annoyance.  Can there really be this many of them still chasing after the kid?  Has it not occurred to anyone to think if he’d been resurrected, it was for a purpose?    
  
Ah, but maybe no one’s even aware the prophet had died in the first place.  Kid had been locked up in the bunker, right, with the Winchesters.  Only the angels sensed the prophets’ presence; the demons might just be seeing that the prophet is wandering around again after a long absence.    
  
Whatever the reason, it’s starting to try Gabriel’s patience.  He’s got shit to do!  Okay, not right now, maybe, but he has plans, and once those plans get underway, he’ll be way too busy to chase after this oblivious little dope, killing off the demons drawn to him like buzzing flies.  
  
So maybe it’s finally time to start answering some of the prayers and general bitching coming from Lebanon, Kansas.  Well, not answering prayers so much as giving them a job.  A job they were pretty experienced with already.  
  
Gabriel hasn’t communicated by angel radio in – centuries.  Luckily, there’s no need, as the Winchesters had given Cassie his own cell phone, and Gabriel had taken down the number during the brief occasions he’d seen his brother.  He’d used it only once before: Castiel had asked him about removing the Mark from the older dumbass’s arm.  The archangel had given a sincere reply to that.  Gabriel =/= Lucifer, as demonstrated in a hotel in Muncie, Indiana.  He simply can’t.  And, although he declines to tell Castiel this, he’s also pretty confident at they shouldn’t.  Castiel didn’t reply after that.  

 

When Gabriel opens his cell phone, his brief message to Castiel is still the last message in that conversation.  He texts the number now, giving a coordinate and a few obscene emoticons that aren’t part of the standard keyboard set.  
  
“…Gabriel.”    
  
The archangel glances up, not sure why he was surprised that his brother had arrived so immediately.  He buffs his fingernails casually on his jacket.  
  
“Yo, Cassie.  Nice to see you still don’t know how to shave.  Or tie a tie.”  
  
“Dean prefers the scruff, he’s said.”  
  
Gabriel makes a gagging noise.  “Yeah, TMI, bro.  As much as I’m dying to know all the sordid details I already suspected, I gotta ask you to do something.”  
  
\--------  
  
The pop factory took all of twenty minutes; nothing like the grand adventure Kevin remembers from his youth.  Still, he got a Dr. Pepper out of the deal.  
  
He doesn’t feel like going back home yet.  The Gardens?  Nah, too far, too expensive.  Plus, he knows his mother is nervous with him being out here on his own.  She’s been texting him every few minutes.  Like it would matter.  If he was possessed or kidnapped, angels or demons, they’d know how to fake a text from him.  
  
He pulls in abruptly when he sees the sign for the Dutch Village.  It’s not too busy, today, in spring on a weekday.  Maybe he’ll get one of those fancy candles for Mom.  Spending her own money, of course, but she might appreciate the thought.    
  
Kevin is trying to figure out which shop it is when he’s pulled by his arm behind the buildings, where the employees park.  He’s almost too startled to shout, and when he tries, something sharp is pressed to his neck.    
  
“Hard to believe you’re this fucking stupid, but I’m happy you are,” a voice murmurs in his ear.  The voice belongs to an attractive young lady with dark hair and eyes that briefly makes him think of Meg, but only briefly.  “Not sure exactly who to turn you in to – hard to tell which one’s in charge now, the Leprechaun or the Mother Bitch, but you’ll be worth something to either one – ”  
  
That’s as far as she gets before she simply isn’t, anymore.  She lights up and then collapses, and it’s not nearly as dramatic as Kevin remembers from previous times.  He’s hardly had a chance to feel sick, terrified, or struck with dread, and it’s over.  
  
He whirls around, looking wildly about him, and his eyes fall on – Cas, and some other guy, who’s grinning broadly.  This new guy looks like an asshole.  
  
“Wow, kiddo, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes, can I?  This is what comes of running with the wrong crowd.”  
  
“It’s good to see you again, Kevin,” Cas says, looking more than a little guilty.  Rightly so.  Bastard.    
  
Kevin wants to lay into him, wants to throw all the rage he’s ever felt at him, wants to shake him for answers – but he turns instead to this new guy, who’s totally an asshole, Kevin can already tell.  
  
“What the fuck.”  He’s proud of the way his voice sounds.  Absolutely dead calm, infused with pure pissed-off.  
  
“C’mon, kiddo, let’s take a walk.  Promise no more demons are gonna bother you.  Guaranteed.  C’mon, we got a lot to talk about.”  
  
\--------  
  
Gabriel makes his formal introductions and boy, this kid is shaping up to be a lot of fun.  Not.  Kevin the Prophet seems to have a stick permanently embedded up his ass, panties perpetually twisted, frowning like the original Grumpy Cat.    
  
Cas and Gabriel had been just about to have their deep, brotherly heart-to-heart when (blessedly) Gabriel had sensed the prophet was in trouble.  During their brief discussion of the prophet, Cas had gotten as far as saying that there was very little resemblance between Kevin and Chuck.    
  
“Kevin is a very dour young man,” Cas had said unironically in his own dour, serious voice, and then they’d had to go.  But Gabriel can see that the description is apt.  
  
He’s a bossy little shit, too.  Gabriel gets the impression that little Kevvy is all out of fucks to give already, and he asks his questions in an exhausted but pointed answer-the-fucking-question tone of voice.    
  
“How am I alive now?”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” Gabriel says.  Cas frowns at him.  
  
“He’s going to be guarding you this time.  It won’t be like before.  An archangel was always supposed to guard the prophet.”  
  
“Then where the fuck-“  
  
“I was dead, before,” Gabriel interrupts brusquely, in a tone that does not invite further questions.  
  
Kevin, out of fucks, questions further.  “Wait, so, someone resurrected you too, then?  Like me?  Is there-“  
  
“NEXT,” Gabriel says in a loud voice, earning a glare from Cas and Kevin both.  
  
Kevin scowls and kicks a rock into the duck pond in the center of the Dutch Village, where they’ve been walking around patrons frozen in place (Gabriel doesn’t like interruptions, unless they come from him).  
  
“Fine,” the prophet says, “Fine.  At least someone please tell me Crowley’s dead.”  
  
“Crowley’s fine,” Cas replies, causing Kevin to make a noise of total disgust and actually throw his hands up in the air.  “…I believe his mother is visiting, in fact.”  
  
“That’s fucking awesome,” Kevin sounds bitter - really bitter.  Must’ve been a lot more to the story than just, “demons kept bothering him,” which was the summary that Gabriel heard.  
  
“Don’t worry about him, bucko,” Gabriel says jovially, draping an arm over the prophet.  “Oh wow – now that’s a bitchface that would look right at home on Sam Winchester!”  
  
That compliment makes Kevin drop the bitchface for a look of nervous pensiveness, and Gabriel’s pretty sure he knows what’s coming next.  
  
Sure enough: “Did… did something happen?  With me and Sam…”  The kid stares deliberately over at the ducks, frozen in place eating the pellets the Village sells for fifty cents a bag.  A couple of kids and an old lady are frozen in the act of tossing more pellets in for them.  
  
Cas pauses  and does this very human gesture of running his fingers through his hair.  This entertains Gabriel enormously; seems like Cassie is firmly entrenched in the flesh nowadays!  He’s sure come a long way from those days when Gabriel had last seen him.  Back during the apocalypse.  
  
Cas fishes around for words, looking a bit guilty again.  “Sam was – possessed by an angel.  The – angel was there, with Sam, in the bunker, to heal his soul.  It was Dean’s decision, to save him.  But this angel was tricked, by Metatron.  We all were.  He was led to believe that to prove himself to Metatron, to redeem himself for past sins, he had to end the line of prophets.”  
  
“He was the one who killed me.  Sam was.”  Kevin’s voice goes flatter than ever.    
  
“…It was Gadreel.  But Sam felt sick about it, Kevin.  I don’t know if he ever got over it,” Cas says, and his voice is matter-of-fact, as always, but at the same time, more gentle than Gabriel would have guessed him capable.  Things really have changed in a few short years.  
  
“Yeah.  Yeah, because I really give a fuck how sad Sam Winchester was about killing me,” Kevin says, still toneless, still staring at the ducks.  He sighs, then asks: “So.  This angel.  And – Metatron.  They want me dead – but didn’t he save me, once?”  This is said quietly, almost to himself.  “Whatever.  So, they still want me dead?”  
  
“Nah, kiddo, that’s all wrapped up,” Gabriel puts in, thumping Cas on the back.  He feels like he needs to try to steer this conversation out of the Whinyangst neighborhood of Sadville if possible.  “The Justice League took care of it.”  
  
“Metatron could be problematic still, but he is under close watch.  Gadreel – ” Kevin shudders at the name and Gabriel wonders if the angel’s name had been burned into his soul’s memory.  “-Gadreel did redeem himself.  He sacrificed himself to allow us to stop Metatron.”    
  
Kevin’s head whips around at that.  “You allied with him.”  
  
“We had to, Kevin.  He was as much fooled by Metatron as anyone else-“  
  
“Because this is what you guys do.  You screw me over, you let me be kidnapped, tortured, killed.  Then you make an alliance with whoever kidnapped or tortured or killed me and have a great old time and kick ass and take names and then resurrect me so you can do it all over again.”

  
Cas looks really guilty and defensive but says nothing.  Gabriel is dying to see how the Winchesters hold up to the guilt trip.    
  
Speaking of which.  “Well, I got some more bad news for you, kiddo,” he says, offering the prophet some gum.  Kevin doesn’t even look over.  
  
\--------  
  
Back at the bunker.  The Winchesters are there, of course.  They both look weird upon seeing him – and massively guilty.  Kevin doesn’t want to hear it.    
  
The archangel – Gabriel – had breezily explained that he had too many other plates in the air to be able to chase after Kevin, killing every demon and nasty that came after him, so it was back to the bunker with him.  Because it was safe there, the Winchesters knew what they were doing, and nevermind that Kevin had survived every other threat he’d encountered without an archangel’s help, the leviathan and Crowley and so on and so forth and it was only a threat in the bunker itself that had finally killed him.  
  
Dean and Sam look at a loss for words.  Cas stands off to the side, looking with concern not at Kevin but at Dean.  Gabriel’s watching the scene with interest.    
  
Kevin feels like he’s going to throw up with stress, seeing Sam.  He still has no actual memory of the thing happening.  He doesn’t remember the sight of Sam reaching towards him as he must have, to smite him.  He doesn’t remember if he ever saw or spoke to the angel itself.  He doesn’t remember the Veil, doesn’t remember being a ghost, doesn’t remember his resurrection.  He doesn’t know why he’s here.    
  
He realizes that Sam’s been repeating his name a couple of times, and looks up to see the sad eyes watching him.  Kevin shudders and mumbles something nonsensical and pushes past, going back to his room, basically fleeing them all.  
  
No one follows.    
  
Kevin shuts the door and bolts it, pointlessly, as any one of them can't get past the lock any time they want.  He stands in the middle of his room, feeling a wave of vertigo as he isn’t sure if the last year and a half even happened.  Was he really in his mother’s kitchen this morning, looking out at the backyard where he’d grown up?  Did anyone even call her yet?    
  
He’s hyperventilating.  He steps over to his desk and places his palms on it, trying to force himself to calm down.  Out of the corner of his eye, Kevin sees a postcard of Tahquamenon Falls – he’d been using that as a bookmark, in the days before he’d died.  The Falls had been one of the best vacations he’d ever taken.  It’s as distant from him as fucking Mars now.  God, it’s even worse to be denied not once, but twice.  
  
Kevin bows his head and gives in to tears.  
  
\--------  
  
Gabriel is being lectured by Castiel.  Little Castiel, angel of Thursday, lecturing the Archangel Gabriel.  

 

It’s actually impressive.  Gabriel’s genuinely impressed that Cassie has the balls to scold him like he’s a naughty teenager - those Winchesters have really changed his little brother, almost beyond recognition.

 

Or maybe it’s more than that.  Maybe it was seeing that the archangels are all fuckups like anyone else.  Cowardly, proud, self-righteous, uptight… yeah, none of the eldest brothers came out looking really great during the would-be apocalypse.  

 

“...He’s probably having a meltdown right now.  You have a personal responsibility to Kevin, as much as the rest of us do, or even more - ”

 

Personal responsibility, that’s the subject of Castiel’s lecture.  Well, sure.  If Gabriel’s entire life had a report card, personal responsibility would have been checked “needs improvement.”  Gabriel’s not gonna deny that.

 

“You know, little bro,” Gabriel says, interrupting whatever Castiel is saying, “I think you might be better off taking the mantle.  Y’know, Heaven’s Head Honcho.  Since you know so much about personal responsibility.”

 

“I tried that already.  Remember?  While you were dead,” Castiel says.  “It ended badly.”

 

“Yeah, Cassie, I remember,” Gabriel says with a groan.  

 

“...I see.  You were mocking me.”  Castiel sounds frustrated.

 

“Look, if I had a nickel for every time some jackass tried to put a captain’s hat on me when the ship was sinking, I could buy three more villas in the Swiss fucking Alps.  I’m not gonna get saddled with this crap just because I’m the last archangel left that your pet Winchesters didn’t kill or lock up - ”

 

“You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself.  Again.”  Castiel’s gone full Winchester, it’s really inarguable.  It could be either one of those plaid-clad muttonheads yelling at him right now, instead of his brother, still wearing the holy tax-accountant look.

 

“All right, well, your opinion is noted.  Now feel free to stick it where the sun don’t shine.”  

 

While Castiel is pausing to puzzle that expression out, Gabriel fucks on outta there.  

 

He goes to Antarctica. It’s early August, and the colony of Emperor penguins near his abode are a bustle of excitement.  The adult penguins come and go, caring for their chicks and returning to the ocean to feed; the chicks themselves waddle around yelling for food.  It’s one of the high points in the breeding cycle and it sufficiently distracts Gabriel.  

 

Things like this.  The penguins.  They’ve got it figured out, what they should do next.  Free will and consciousness - sometimes Gabriel thinks Lucifer was right.  God should’ve stopped at high noon on the fifth day, after creating the creatures that walked upon the earth.  It was the last-minute additions that complicated everything.  
  
\--------

Kevin doesn’t know his classic cars - or any cars, really.  As a Young Steward of the Earth (an environmentally-aware club in his middle school) he had written a pretty good research essay on Green cars, but that was more of a concept than reality, and as a teenager he had swiftly realized that any car was a good car to have, Green or not.  Beyond that, he has no interest in any brands or styles or whatever. It’s not pertinent to his priorities.

 

So when he defiantly steals a car from the bunker’s collection of oldies and leaves Lebanon in his dust, Kevin only knows that it’s a Cadillac, painted light blue, and that he’s probably going to need to refuel, like, forty times before he reaches Chicago.  Old cars are not very environmentally friendly.  So he steals one of the Winchesters’ illegal credit cards as well.  

 

Guilt twinges at him a little.  Of the three days he was in the bunker with Sam and Dean again, they demonstrated their misery pretty convincingly.  Not like he doubted that they felt bad, but… he doesn’t want to see it.  He doesn’t want to stay mired in this unchanging situation.  And it never does change, does it?  Supernatural things happen, the Winchesters hurt each other with the best of intentions, and someone gets killed along the way.  Another burden gets added to the Winchesters’ list of things to be guilty about, and it all repeats, ad infinitum.  More of the same.  After a mere three days of it, Kevin feels like he might genuinely lose his mind.

 

Plus he can’t stop flinching when he sees Sam.  He knows Sam wasn’t the one to kill him, he gets that, but that feeling of dread is powerful.  So he bails.

 

He has no good idea of what he’ll do in Chicago.  It’s just a big city he can get lost in.  Kevin doesn’t bother lying to himself that he won’t end up in Michigan again eventually.  He’ll be more careful when he gets there.  He was stupid not to be careful before.  But between his mom and him, they know stuff now.  They can come up with enough wards and protection to keep everyone out.  It worked in the bunker.  Hell, if the Winchesters can stay safe as much as they do, with all the creatures that want them dead, Kevin and his mom ought to be able to manage it.  There’s no need to rely on this asshole Gabriel and the bunker.

 

The long car ride is glorious.  Kevin tears up the road - this is one unquantifiable thing he’d never covered in his essay, how freaking awesome it is to soar down an endless country highway in one of these old cars.  He blasts his music, and wonders if he’s the first person ever to play Yo-Yo Ma at full volume in a 1950s Cadillac.  The Caddy had been fitted with a tape deck at one point - probably Dean’s doing - and Kevin picked up a converter from a Wal-Mart to play his music.

 

“Six Suites” and “Goat Rodeo” occupy most of the time to Kansas City, where he abruptly chooses to veer north and take that way to Chicago - he feels queasy when he remembers Warsaw, so close by, and that shitty houseboat... 

Des Moines, then, and from there to Davenport, and onward, to Chicago.  His phone loyally continues to play his music but otherwise doesn’t trouble him with any phone calls - he’d deactivated the cellular service to make sure there was no way he could be tracked.  

 

Kevin burns out of energy near Joliet (didn’t the Blues Brothers take place here? his fatigued mind wonders), and pulls into a small roadside motel.  He uses cash to pay and sets up the minimal salt lines and warding before conking out.  

 

He dreams of Crowley.  It isn’t like before - this time, it’s clearly a dream, and although he wakes up in a cold sweat, he manages to settle himself down eventually.  Crowley is preoccupied right now, Cas had said.  Evidently everyone is.  As long as Kevin doesn’t do anything overtly risky or stupid, he should be fine.

 

The next day, he looks for a fast food restaurant with wifi so he can use his phone to send his mom an email.  Doubtless she’s been told by now that he’s gone.  On a whim he turns down a road that leads to a McDonald’s and goes in, buying a salad and Coke.  He finally listens to the voice messages that have been accumulating over the past twenty-four hours, and is unsurprised to hear increasingly worried or angry messages from the Winchesters - but not from Mom.  They must be hoping they can find him first.

 

Kevin’s about to compose the email when abruptly he sees something that freezes his blood.  He ducks down, behind the barrier next to his table, and hurriedly sends a message to his mom, before quickly and quietly slipping out of the restaurant, climbing into the Cadillac and admirably waiting until he’s actually on the road before peeling away.

 

He drives nonstop, going east, only leaving the highway to refuel before driving again.  He stops at Toledo - five hours of driving makes him feel safer, anyway, and he’s loath to go much further away from Michigan.

 

Kevin dreams of Crowley again, and angels, and the tablet.

  
\--------  
  
The penguins have their calming effect, and Gabriel’s just about to contact Kali and talk to her, see if she’s interested in a little no-strings hookup, when he gets an urgent prayer from Sam Winchester.  Again.  

 

 _Hey, Gabriel?  Kevin - uh, he took off.  He just stole one of our cars and vanished.  We’ve been looking for him - but, he just emailed Linda.  His mom.  She texted us - she’s really pissed, by the way - and said that, apparently, he spotted Samandriel, the angel, in a McDonald’s in Joliet.  The one by the Bronkberry Farm, whatever that is.  We haven’t told Cas yet.  He has - a history with Samandriel.  So we thought maybe you -_ ”

 

 _Keep your shirt on, Samantha, I’ll look into it._ So much for his penguin-affected blood pressure levels.  

 

Gabriel zaps to where the stupid kid ended up before he does anything else, staying invisible - the prophet’s in a hotel, miles from the bunker, drawing warding symbols on the walls.  Looks like everything’s fine here, if you ignore the fact that the little shit is supposed to be in Lebanon right now.  Gabriel spots Kevin’s phone on the bed and sends it a text message telling him they’re going to have words later.  He expects this will twist the kid’s panties a little, as the cellular service was shut off. Good.  He takes off before watching that particular scene play out, though; headed for Joliet.

  
It takes Gabriel a while to find any angelic presence, and the credit for the delay goes to the second shock of the day: fucking Balthazar is alive, too.  Balthazar.  From Castiel’s garrison.  An angel after Gabriel’s heart.  Still alive.  Still crafty, too, to have managed to hide his presence from Gabriel’s active searching.  Possibly Gabriel would never have found them, except Samandriel isn’t so good at hiding his tracks.  Obviously, since even Kevin had spotted him.  It’s kind of endearing, actually, once Gabriel locates them and starts watching them.  
  
They had taken on half-baked roles as roommates, improbable though the combination seems.  Balthazar is some kind of sommelier at a restaurant, which seems fitting, while Samandriel contents himself to be a crossing guard and aide for a local library, which keeps them in good standing in the community, in spite of the fact that they absolutely come across as an aging gay sugar daddy and his kept twink.  Well, of course, Balthazar would actually be a pansexual sugar daddy.  Gabriel’s brief reconnaissance already shows that the old lech hasn’t changed his ways since Gabriel had last known him: a total equal opportunity hedonist.

 

Nostalgia aside, and also putting aside the amazement that these two, of all angels, are sharing a rented house together, Gabriel’s also a little concerned.  Castiel’s been resurrected.  Gabriel’s been resurrected.  Now these two?  Hmm.  
  
It’s tempting to arrive disguised as a sexxxy lady (or guy) and see if he can seduce the older angel – 100 points if he can get li’l Samandriel in on it too, before revealing himself – but Gabriel has shit to accomplish and questions he wants answered, and so he rings their doorbell wearing the face they’d remember as his, from time gone by, and holds up a six-pack of beer in each hand with a dorky grin as Balthazar answers the door.  
  
“Well howdy, neighbor, who would’ve guessed I’d find you here?  Small world, ain’t it, get the fuck out of the door, Balthy, I’m coming in.”  He shoves the beer into Balthazar’s unresisting arms, pushing past the twin looks of shock on their faces, and throws himself on their (hideous) suede couch.

 

“Gabriel,” Balthazar breathes, sounding unusually hushed.

 

Samandriel just goes wide-eyed and silent, darting terrified glances between his elder brothers.    
  
“In the flesh.  And I see I’m not the only one.”

 

“...Right.  Well.  Take a seat, why don’t you.”  The moment of uncertainty is gone, at least from Balthazar.  The swagger and smirk are back, firmly fixed in place, and Gabriel feels a strange combination of both wistfulness - they _had_ had good times, he and Balthazar - and annoyance.  Is this what it’s like to deal with Gabriel himself?  Smirk and swagger?

 

He’s pleased at least to to see that Balthazar has actually opened the beer and taken a drink already.  The old lush.    
  
Samandriel just quietly shuffles nearer to Balthazar.  Cute.

 

They stay like that a long moment, the silence dragging on.  Balthazar’s got a thumb in his belt loop, cocky, sipping the beer and eyeing Gabriel, until he finally rolls his eyes and slouches over in an exaggerated posture of annoyance.

 

“So.  I suppose you want us to shower you with our gratitude for bringing us back from the Beyond.  Let me just warm up, take a practice run first - ”

 

“Nope.  Wasn’t me.  Though I’d be happy to accept your gratitude anyway, whatever form it takes,” Gabriel leers at Balthazar.

 

This prompts a slightly-more-genuine smirk and a flop into a nearby armchair, legs sprawled wide.  “As if you could keep up.  So.  Are you gonna tell us anything that’s been going on upstairs?”

 

“Was hoping you’d be telling me.  You look like you’ve been alive longer than me.  Here, kid, you’re making me nervous.”  

 

Samandriel isn’t making him nervous, but the way the younger angel stands there solemnly watching is getting on his nerves.  Gabriel grabs one of the beers out from where Balthazar set them on an end table and tosses t at Samandriel, and for a moment is nearly positive the kid is gonna watch the beer go sailing past him to smash open on the floor, but he snatches it out of the air at the last moment.

 

“Um.  Thank you, Lord Archangel,” he says uncertainly, and Balthazar snorts.

 

“Don’t bother with that shit, ‘Manny.  Gabriel here doesn’t really need titles these days.”  The obvious challenge is ballsy and so overt that Gabriel almost feels as though Balthazar slapped him in the face with a glove.

 

“You remind me of Dean Winchester,” he says deliberately, and grins savagely at the look on Balthy’s face.

 

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Balthazar doesn’t back down.

 

“You’re wrong.  Archangel 4 lyfe.”  He tries to pronounce the text-spelling through tone alone, but if he managed it, Balthazar doesn’t look impressed.  
   
Balthazar leans way back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other, aggressively nonchalant.  “Yeah, well, there’s no real rules anymore, are there?  No rank, no meaning.  We’re all still little lost orphans, no Daddy to tell us what to do.  There’s been a revolving door of brothers and sisters trying to take Michael’s spot in running heaven and each one’s fucked up royally.  Hell’s in just as much chaos.  No one knows what to do anymore.  Even when you were around, you refused to lead.  Even Castiel tried.  So as keen as I am to have the original deserter back and giving orders, I feel as though Manny and I, we’re doing just fine here in Joliet.  We’ll keep the beer, thanks, but you can keep the shit where you ask us to sacrifice even more for a lost cause.”

 

Gabriel lets him finish, because, well, it’s true.  He tosses another beer at Balthazar, who catches it without taking his eyes off Gabriel.  

 

“Not giving orders, bro.  There’s no orders to give.  I’m just as out to sea as you are.  I’m guessing you needed to get all that off your chest, so no hard feelings, I get that it’s frustrating as fuck right now.  But don’t fucking lip off to me again.  I am - ”

 

“Please, brothers,” Samandriel interrupts out of nowhere, still gripping his beer tightly.  “We’ve all come back from the dead.  Even if we don’t know why - we’ve been given a second chance.  Haven’t you missed each other?  We don’t need to argue, do we?”

 

Gabriel and Balthazar both stare at him, eyebrows raise, and Samandriel admirably refuses to recoil from their combined glares.  Gabriel sighs first.

 

“Precious little cinnamon bun, too pure for this world,” he says.  Samandriel’s brow furrows; Balthazar snorts and visibly relaxes, aka, adopts a less stupidly casual posture.  “Manny, is it?”

 

“Can hardly call him Sam,” Balthazar says wryly.

 

“No, sure can’t.  Okay, look.  No arguing.  Nothing but hugs and I-love-you-man’s.  Glad to have you back.  And yeah, I know my track record isn’t great, but I am gonna figure out why we’re all back all of the sudden.  Currently, I know jack shit.  How ‘bout you?  Know anything at all?  Are there more of us?”   
  
Balthazar and Samandriel both glance at each other.  
  
Gabriel takes a moment to be amused by that, though he sympathizes.  Once you start spending time in a vessel, it gets tough to keep the human reflexes from kicking in.  Cas is one of the more successful ones, mainly because he had been so out of the loop with humanity for so long that the vessel’s inherited quirks are still slightly too alien to him for him to adopt them so readily.  Balthazar and Samandriel, however, both seem well-entrenched, with obvious tells.    
  
He puts one hand on his hip and sighs, putting his other hand out in a sort of “give it here” gesture.  “All right, kids, let’s hear it.  No secrets from old Uncle Gabe.”  
  
Neither of them so much as roll their eyes at this, which was worrying.    
  
Samandriel wordlessly disappears from the room and when Gabriel shoots a glance at Balthazar, he sees that he’s adopted a ridiculously casual sprawl in his chair, giving every overwhelming impression of “nah, don’t give a fuck,” if you discount the fact that he won’t meet Gabriel’s eyes.  Those funny human tells.  Doesn’t bode well.  
  
When Samandriel returns, he hands Gabriel a tablet – just the Kindle kind, not the carved-in-stone kind.  On the tablet is an open article from a local news station, which reports a massive sinkhole that opened up in Stull Cemetery, swallowing up nearly a quarter of an acre, while a freak simultaneous fire had destroyed even more of the property.  The hole had collapsed in on itself by the time the huge fire was put out, and there was difficulty determining how deep it had been.  
  
Locals are considering a lawsuit to the city for damages to their families’ gravesites yadda yadda welp, it looks like Lucifer and Michael are out.  
  
Gabriel doesn’t realize he’d said that out loud (look who was entrenched in human quirks now) until Samandriel nods and makes murmuring noises of assent.  
  
Balthazar goes to a cabinet near the door to the kitchen; he appears to have abandoned the beer for scotch.  
  
“That was a couple of weeks ago though, and nothing’s happened.  Maybe they’re reformed,” Samandriel suggests without a lot of conviction, and is met with an equally unconvinced noise from Gabriel.    
  
“I found some demons shortly thereafter and got some information from them.  Inasmuch as the information can be trusted.  I didn’t run into anyone upper-tier.  But no one appears to realize anything’s happened in the Cage.” Balthazar muses, returning and rattling the ice in his scotch.  “Nor is there any chatter on angel radio.  So it’s not impossible that they didn’t break out at all.  Perhaps it was some moron’s failed attempt - be it a few loyal demons, or a couple of idiot witches.”    
  
Gabriel conjures a Mai Tai, complete with gaudy umbrella, and slurps it obnoxiously, declining to comment  
  
Samandriel chooses to ignore the glaringly bad manners of the archangel and carries on talking.  “Even if they did get out.  The entire order of Heaven and Hell is unrecognizable to what it was - thousands of unchanging years and now this upheaval.  The intended Apocalypse is completely destroyed and we now deal with threats that we haven’t seen in millennia.”  
  
“Do you even remember shit like Leviathan?  Or the Darkness?  Or even the Legion, for fuck’s sake?”  Yeah, okay, so asking all these questions only to deliberately derail the answers might be seen as counterproductive, but Gabriel doesn’t particularly feel compelled to justify himself if he becomes somewhat of a petulant asshole when the occasion calls for it.  
  
“I was tasked with guarding the Garden with Joshua.  Along with the other fledglings.  But yes, I remember,” Samandriel replies seriously.  “And I think in light of these resurfacing problems, Michael and Lucifer might well decide to resolve their concerns at a later, more stable time.”  
  
“If they ever even bother to take up the cause again,” Balthazar adds.  
  
“Right, right, thanks for keeping your finger on the pulse of the eldest archangels’ motivations,” Gabriel says, sarcasm heavy enough to block the annoyance on the other angels’ faces.  He’s doing it again, isn’t he, seeking out allies only to belittle them when they answer his call.    
  
“You haven’t known them since they went into the Cage together,” Samandriel, who cannot read an audience, points out.  
  
“Right.  Prison changes people.  Look at Gadreel,” Balthazar puts in, cutting off whatever snark Gabriel was about to throw out.    
  
Gadreel.  Yeah.  That guy.  

 

“He’s dead too, right?  Which means I can expect to see him alive in Reading, Pennsylvania, in a week or so?”

 

Balthazar shrugs.  “Maybe.  Look, I don’t know why we got resurrected.  Dad certainly never spoke to either of us.  All we know is, we’re not keen on running into Castiel and his band of human groupies if it can be avoided.”

 

“If it can be avoided, I wouldn’t blame you.  And I’ll even go back and tell the Losechesters that the prophet had a false alarm; no one’s here.  But if something’s happening.  If there’s some reason we’re all coming back.  I expect you to take up the blade.”

 

Samandriel winces; Balthazar narrows his eyes.  

 

“You’ll forgive me if I still have a hard time swallowing an order from the first of the angels to abandon the fight.  You were gone a long time, Lord Archangel.  Longer than me, longer than anyone.”

 

“Yeah, well.”  Gabriel finishes his Mai Tai, summons another.  “I’m back now.”  
  
\--------

 

The phone lights up; incoming text.  This, in spite of the fact that cellular service is still off.

 

>> _So.  Enjoying La Porte?  Blue Heron Inn, I do believe?_

 

Kevin’s hands are trembling when he reaches for the phone.  So Gabriel knows where he is, knows he left Toledo.

 

<< _I don’t want to go back._

 

>> _You know it’s a safehouse, right?  You WANT all the nasties to come after you?_

 

<< _I avoided all the nasties until one got me inside the bunker._

 

There’s a pause.  Kevin forces himself through his paces: breathe in, breathe out.  Calm.  Left-hand pizzicato.  String crossing.  His fingers twitch as he goes through the warm-up on an imaginary cello.

 

>> _That was a fluke.  He won’t be back._  

 

<< _There’s nothing for me there._

 

Another pause.

 

>> _Sitting around shitty motel rooms, waiting for demons or angels to find you, that’s what’s soooooo much better than sitting around the bunker with Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber?_

<< _You’re supposed to smite anything that bothers me._

 

>> _Yeah, well, I’ve gone derelict in my duties before, kiddo.  Might do it again if you’re gonna be this much of a pain in the ass._

 

<< _I don’t want to be stuck in there forever.  It’s like a prison.  If I’m just going to stay stuck in a prison where I can’t do anything or change anything or go anywhere, I may as well have stayed dead._

 

A really long pause after that, so long that Kevin runs through his entire imaginary cello exercises twice and gives up to go to the bathroom and wash his face.  He’s drying off with a towel when he hears the buzz of the phone.

 

>> _Go back for now.  Give it a chance.  Gigantor’s been crying in my ear ever since you turned up missing.  I’ll come up with an alternative._

 

<< _Alternative?_  

 

And, Sam’s been “crying in his ear”?  What the hell?  

 

But there’s no answer.  Not when Kevin orders the pizza, not when he showers and changes into his pajamas, not when he gives up and calls his mom to talk to her.  

 

Mom says that if he wants to come up to Michigan again and hide out, she’ll hide with him.  But she also thinks he should try to stick it out in the bunker, at least for now.  

 

Kevin tells her he misses her.  She says she misses him too.  They cry again, and Kevin has a hard time getting how this is going to be different from before.

 

\-----

 

Well, he’s not wrong.  It’s not totally different from prison.  How is the prophet expected to do anything from inside that bunker?  There’s no tablet there to translate.  He can’t follow his nose to anything new.  The muttonhead brothers aren’t going to be useful, they’re too busy trying to remove the Mark of Cain from the elder Winchester’s arm which, Gabriel could tell them, isn’t gonna happen.  The best they’re gonna be able to do is learn to live with it.

 

So.  How to arrange it so the kid can leave the bunker.

 

It’s possible that they could hit the road together, like an archangel-and-prophet buddy movie, but frankly Gabriel’s pretty sure Kevin’s going to annoy him to a state of wrath before too long.  Same way it is with Sam Winchester.  Gabriel likes the guy, but only in small doses.  Not to mention he doesn’t like the idea of being beholden to whatever the kid feels like doing.

 

Second possibility.  Assign Balthazar and Samandriel to do it?  Ah, but all three of them would revolt at that.  Gabriel really shouldn’t tap into the angels’ loyalties until he really has to, and Kevin doesn’t seem like he’s Heaven’s biggest fan right now.  Understandably.

 

Third possibility.  Find this upstart Crowley guy and explain to him how it’s gonna be.  Tempting, but Gabriel knows from long centuries of experience that trying to keep a handle on demons is like playing whack-a-mole.  Maybe he can keep this Crowley guy under his thumb, but some other one, or more than one, will turn up, grabbing at a perceived opportunity for more power.

 

Make a mark, then.  

 

It’s been a long time since he’s done this - but not as long as one might have thought.  Gabriel had made a mark for that princess in Ayutthaya, about six centuries ago.  He had offered one to Kali, but she’d scoffed, which, in hindsight, is kinder than he deserved for the arrogance.

 

Well, creating a mark seems like the best of the options available, even though it calls for the most effort.  With a sigh, Gabriel returns to his headquarters, and summons a shade of the princess for inspiration.

 

\-------

 

Back at the bunker.

 

Kevin drags his feet as he approaches the door, and texts that he’s back.  He’s surprised when Sam flings the door open a minute later and scoops him up in a huge hug that lifts him off his feet.  It startles him into hugging back, albeit awkwardly, and he doesn’t even have time to feel the dread.

 

Sam sets him back down, grinning, looking sad and hopeful at the same time - a look only he can pull off.  

 

“We were worried,” he says, leaving his hand on Kevin’s shoulder.  Kevin is a little tense, but doesn’t move away.

 

“Yeah, sorry.  Joyride was fun though.”

 

Sam’s laughter is - well.  Kevin doesn’t know if he’s ever heard it before.  The hunter tugs lightly on Kevin’s shoulder, pulling him inside.  Kevin follows.

 

“I bet.  That was how we figured out you were gone - that one’s actually Charlie’s favorite.”

 

“Charlie?  The guy from the LARP.”  Kevin’s not totally at ease, and the interior of the bunker looms up before him, as unchanging and eternal as the Veil.  But, the fear of Sam is diminished now, somewhat.  Knowing that he can leave if he needs to, that he can steal a car and drive off into the wilds of America and vanish… it helps.  

 

“Uh, close.  Charlie’s…”  Sam trails off as Dean wanders up from one of the interior rooms.  His face isn’t the disappointment or anger that Kevin had been expecting.  He looks exasperated, and that - feels okay.  

 

“All right, so, you had your little moment?  Done giving us heart attacks for now?”  

 

“Aw, so you do care.”  

 

As soon as he’s said it he regrets it.  Because, although Kevin doesn’t remember anything after dying, he knows very well how his death had eaten at Dean.  Had eaten at both Winchesters.  

 

He doesn’t want to turn this into another conversation about it, so he holds his hands up to begin his apology, but Dean shakes his head.  

 

“Yeah.  We do.”

 

Sam squeezes his shoulder again.  It’s a start.

 

\-------  
  
“So I’ve been thinking about sex slaves,” Gabriel opens the conversation with little fanfare, arriving cross-legged on Kevin’s neatly-made bed.  It’s a few weeks after their texted conversation.  Surreptitiously, Gabriel’s checked in a couple of times - things seem to be improving in the bunker, at least where Kevin is concerned, but he’s still not prophesizing so Gabriel’s going to go through with it.  
  
The prophet jumps at his sudden appearance, startled, and his shoulders stiffen, before he finally decides to make a face that conveys both annoyance and a sense of “ew, gross.”  
  
“Riiiiight, okay?  I can tell you for free that I don’t care,” Kevin says, trying to look as though the boring-ass Latin scroll in front of him is so much more interesting than sex slaves.  
  
“Yeah right.  I’ve seen your porn mags.”  Gabriel leers at him, just to see the kid’s nose wrinkle.  
  
“Those are Dean’s.  They’re the only ones around here,” Kevin protests.    
  
“Whatever,” Gabriel says, snapping his gum, “point is, I was thinking about sex slaves and sex cages and got philosophical.”  He pauses briefly to snap his fingers; an enormous wad of taffy apparates into Kevin’s mouth, forestalling any more protests.  Gabriel continues as Kevin chews angrily.  
  
“So, even though a gimp in a cage is theoretically the same sex slave as one with a collar, there’s an illusion of more freedom, right?  Because the collared gimp can walk around and do stuff.  Which means that his master must trust him, and knows the gimp will come skipping back when the master snaps his fingers.  AND the gimp is a happy gimp, because he knows he’s so beholden to the master that a cage isn’t even necessary anymore.  They’re totally bound together.  Which is what gets them both off.  Interesting concept, isn’t it?  That a collar demonstrates ownership better than a cage.”  
  
Kevin only replies to this brilliant philosophical oration by making a gagging noise, which could either be his honest reply, or an attempt to dislodge the taffy from his jaws.  
  
“Sooooo, since I want my little buddy to be happy, I’ve devised this sexy alternative to the bunker…”  Gabriel snaps again and a choker necklace snakes its way into Kevin’s hand.  It’s light and intricately woven of strands of a deceptively frail-looking cloth, with a golden weave cutting through the cloth, trailing out to a small dangling length of wispy fronds.  “That’s one of my feathers, Kevlyn.  If you found the right religious nut, you could sell that and buy five mansions and a yacht with the money.  But try to refrain.  That collar will let every monster, demon, leviathan, et cetera, know that you’re my bitch.”  
  
Kevin’s still tense, shoulders up.  He swallows with difficulty and commendably doesn’t rub his jaw, which must be aching.  “I don’t want to be your slave.  I’m not your bitch.”  
  
Gabriel twirls a lollipop into being, playing it over his fingers.  
  
“You wouldn’t be.  Not really.  That collar won’t make you beholden to me.  It’s literally just a marker – like the handprint, on Dean’s shoulder?  Letting everyone know that Cas has taken a personal interest.  But, no offense to Cas, but my mark is gonna echo a little louder, if you follow me.  No one’s gonna start shit with you unless they’re ready for some straight old-fashioned smite action.”  He pauses, considering, and then adds: “Maybe comparing it to Cas and the Winchester isn’t perfect.  I have no plans to gaze deeply and longingly into your eyes, so no worries there.”  
  
“Good.”    
  
“I’m more of the spank-and-tickle sort of guy,” Gabriel adds, for no other reason than to see the – yup, there it is, the epic eyeroll the kid’s been perfecting.  The archangel finds he likes the dynamic the two of them have going on – the fun, charming, outgoing Gabriel playing to the grumpy, serious, reticent prophet.  If they could just add in a functional working relationship, there could be a beautiful thing going.    
  
“You’re freaking gross is what you are.”  Kevin grouses, turning to examine the collar.  
  
“Look, I’ve been told that being in a prison sucks.  I wouldn’t know; I’ve been Mr. Joe Law-Abiding Citizen my entire life, but it sounds legit.  So, you can wear that instead.  That’s all.  I’m freeing you from the bunker.  No more Winchesters for babysitters.  That necklace will scare off anything.  You can wear that, if you wanna wander around, or you can go eat a dick.  It’s all the same to me.”  Gabriel ends as rudely as possible in order to offset the uncharacteristic kindness that’s making his skin crawl, and vanishes before the kid gets a chance to comment or, Dad forbid, thank him.  
  
\--------

It’s Kevin’s 20th birthday (sort of), and weirdly, it’s like nothing ever changed.

 

Kevin remembers a line from the Dune novel, by Frank Herbert, when Jessica returns to Castle Caladan.  How there should be a word for when you’re expecting things to feel different when you return, but it all feels as though you never left.

 

Double JJ Ranch is just as awesome as it was when he was a kid.  Yeah, he’s kind of old for balloon animals, but since everyone else is exclaiming over them, he just goes with it and accepts his balloon llama, grinning.

 

Kevin can’t seem to stop grinning.  

 

Cas tries to ride a horse through the snow.  He complains the entire time that he thought Western society had moved on from this undesirable mode of transportation.  

 

“Yeah, it’s horseshit, ain’t it,” Gabriel calls back to him, and it’s not even funny, but they all laugh.  It’s like being set free.  

 

Whatever dark secret the Winchesters have been keeping lately - something about how Dean managed to kill Abaddon - being out here has at least temporarily set them free, too.  Kevin has the privilege of watching Dean whoop like a teenager as his inner tube races down a snowy hill.  

 

Sam dons purple swim trunks at the indoor water park and all the women and more than a few men turn to stare and yeah, fine, Kevin’s one of them.  Gabriel splashes water at him, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, and Kevin actually blushes before swimming off, while Gabriel turns his attention to wolf-whistling at Sam

 

Gabriel’s appearance was a little unexpected, but not totally unwelcome.  He hassles Cas and the Winchesters relentlessly, flirts with Kevin’s mom and lewdly offers to be Chief Administrator of the Birthday Spankings.

 

They retire to their rented log cabins and watch dorky comedies and cheesy sci-fi, with M&Ms (Kevin’s favorite) and hot chocolate, and the hot chocolate gets spiked per Mom’s suggestion, with butterscotch Schnapps.  

 

It’s not as though the bad times have been erased.  But they feel… distant.  Maybe this is simply how Kevin’s going to get past the trauma.  By filling his life with different things.  

 

He has no delusions that this new ability to move on from the past is due in large part to Gabriel’s intervention.  The necklace works.  Kevin went to St Louis once, testing, soon after first getting the necklace, and hung around there for a few days.

 

He checked out Grant’s Farm, the Jefferson Barracks Park, a bahn mi restaurant...  It’s while he’s at lawn in front of the Arch that Kevin gets approached by a couple of demons.  They’re wearing meatsuits belonging to Australian tourists, to judge from the accent, and one of them places a hand on his arm and -

 

Blue/gold.  Swords.  Singing, like bells.

 

The vision is over slightly before he has time to recognize it, and the demons are gone.  Kevin whirls around, breathing hard.  Everyone else is walking and chatting as though nothing’s happened.  There is no trace of the demons who were just here, just seconds ago, he’s sure of it.

 

The only thing at all to tell that there were demons is the lingering memory of the sound of bells, and the feeling of heat at his neck - the necklace is warm to the touch.

 

 _Gabriel…?_  He prays, uncertainly.  There’s no answer, but after he returns to the Cadillac, there’s a bag of M &Ms on the driver’s seat.

 

Other demons, encountered on the way back to Lebanon, are quicker on the uptake, and withdraw as soon as they see the necklace.

 

With this renewed freedom of movement, the dread he used to feel about the bunker has diminished greatly.  Plus, now, the first thing he thinks of when he sees Sam is no longer the not-memory of Sam killing him, but instead, well, the actual memory of the hunter at the water park.  It’s shallow, yes, but honestly… Kevin’s happy of the reminder that he is, in fact, a healthy young man.  

 

The Winchesters are still an impenetrable team, and Kevin makes no progress at prying at the secrets they’re keeping.  It’s worrisome, but not so bad now that Gabriel’s making good on his promise.

 

Honestly?  Kevin’s okay.  He’s enjoying things again.  And hasn’t been required to do any “prophety” things at all, not once since he came back to life in Michigan.  

 

For a few months, this is enough for him.  But when spring comes around, Kevin starts getting restless.  The ambient weather, combined with memories of what springtime means for other people (graduation), makes Kevin keenly feel the need to - to DO something.

 

Lebanon’s high school hosts a job fair - a little bleak, given the local population of like 200 people - but there are representatives from colleges there.

 

Kevin picks up a brochure while he’s there.

  
\------

 

Gonna have to admit defeat on the prophet idea.  Annoying.

 

Not that it’s so awful, having brought the kid back to life.  He’s really blossomed, now, into a sorta happy-ish little grump, occasionally fun to have around.  Basically sweet.  Kinda cute.  Latent crush on the Samsquatch, which is an entertaining testament to the human ability to bounce back.  And it’s a little satisfying to know that he took something that was sad and made it happy again, with fairly minimal effort.  

 

So yeah, whatever, glad the little mini-prophet gets his second chance at life.  But as far as doing jack squat for Gabriel?  As far as leading the way, finding God’s Will?  Nada.  Zip.  Bupkis.  

 

He feels very uneasy about this possibility of Michael and Lucifer running around, though he has to agree with Balthazar’s assessment that they might not in fact have escaped.  There’s no trace of them. And neither of his older brothers has ever been good at maintaining a low profile.

 

There’s more.  Cassie finally gets around to mentioning that they ran into, oh, the Antichrist, shortly before Gabriel bit it in that hotel.  If Lucifer is still in his cage, then the Antichrist is not going to be too problematic, but if he’s out…

 

And, the Mark of Cain… it’s bad voodoo.  Gabriel wasn’t privy to the exchanges between Dad and Lucifer, nor the exchange between Lucifer and Cain.  So he doesn’t know.  But he’s got a bad feeling.

 

All this shit, and he has no idea what he’s supposed to do about it.  

 

\------

 

Kevin’s in Michigan again.  He visits Mom; they go to Country Dairy in New Era and check out the new pizza place they have now.  Unlimited refills on chocolate milk; why did he ever go vegan, again?

 

The high school in New Era has brochures for Michigan universities.  He doesn’t bother picking one up for U of M.  It had been one of his top choices before; it seems depressing to try for it twice.

 

MSU, Grand Valley, Ferris State, Western, Central… he sees one for Michigan Tech, which makes him think of the Upper Peninsula, which makes him think of Mackinac Island.  The whim takes hold and Kevin asks his mom if she wants to go with him to visit.  He’s joking; she hates it there.  She swats him with a dish towel and tells him to send her a postcard.

 

So he goes, and like so many things he’s done recently, it seems better than ever before.  The air smells sweeter, the water in the lake seems clearer, the colors of the flowers at the Grand Hotel seem brighter.  Kevin rides a bicycle everywhere and thinks of how six months ago, he was ashes on the wind.  

 

He browses the library and reads a collection of short science fiction stories while lounging on the beach.

 

Next to him, a group of tourists are talking.  

 

“Yes but, when Rich took us out on his yacht last summer, we accidentally crossed the border once and the Canadian coast guard came and yelled at us practically immediately.”

 

“All I know is, this guy looked nuts, and I’m pretty sure he had zero papers.  I mean, he didn’t even give a last name at first.  Just, “Lucifer, that is, Adam.”  And it took him a minute to realize they needed the last names, then he just said “Winchester.”  Like he needed to remember, pfft.  So, religious weirdos who are apparently on some crazy drugs, they can make it through the border somehow.  Pretty sure nobody’s gonna give a shit if we bring ordinary weed back.”

 

“I dunno.  That was Sault St. Marie?  I guess maybe the border crossing there is slow enough to overlook stuff like that...”

 

Kevin doesn’t even wait to hear the rest before he’s praying to Gabriel.

  
\---------

Gabriel considers notifying Balthazar and Samandriel, but ultimately doesn’t bother.  He’d spent his time dicking around instead of building an army like he should have.  There’s no time to seek the others and try to herd those cats into helping; and two little angels - not even seraphim - aren’t going to make a difference.  Castiel might be of aid, but given how things panned out at the end - Gabriel, they might speak to calmly.  Castiel, probably not.  So Gabriel decides to approach his brothers alone.  

 

Even with the narrow range of location, it’s nearly impossible to find them.  There’s no trace of archangel anywhere.  Gabriel sweeps through the city of Sault St. Marie in his true form, invisible to the people walking below.  Wings spread wide, blade not drawn but kept close, every eye open and piercing through space and time.  

 

When he finally casts his gaze far enough out, he sees the faintest trace of their presence.  The teltale sign is a house that’s out of place here - out in the forest, away from the city, there is a small ranch house.  There’s a mailbox and a driveway, though no road leads to it and there’s no car.  The lawn is neatly manicured but there’s no tracks of a lawnmower across the grass.

 

Gabriel approaches cautiously, returning to his vessel in order to conceal his presence somewhat.  No one is visible from the edge of the property.  He circles around, keeping to the treeline.  It isn’t real, this house, the lawn.  It’s a clearing.  The rest is an illusion…

 

“Gabriel.  I knew you would come, eventually.”

 

Gabriel’s blade is out and pointed at the source of the voice - not to his surprise, it’s his brother.  Just the one brother.  Lucifer.

 

“No, brother.  There is no need,” Lucifer croaks.  “Time has moved on from that point.”

 

The tattered shreds of Lucifer are wrapped around the body of Adam Milligan, clinging to the human’s form.  Well.  “Tattered shreds” may be a bit of an exaggeration, but compared to the last time Gabriel saw him…

 

“Was it Michael that did this?” he asks, trying not to look as stunned as he feels.

 

Lucifer laughs, sort of, for a certain definition of laughing.  It’s a joyless noise.  Adam’s face doesn’t change.  Deep down, buried beneath Lucifer’s presence, Gabriel sees it - a tiny, quivering ball of light.  It’s wrapped up tightly in Lucifer’s grace and in no way resembles any human soul that Gabriel’s ever seen.

 

“Michael.  No.  And yes.  He is here.”

 

Lucifer’s eyes roll back in his head and his true form briefly rears up from Adam’s body, reaching out towards the house.  A light answers him from the windows and Michael appears.

 

Michael looks like the ghost of an angel, if such a thing could exist.  He drags himself across the clearing with Lucifer’s aid, perking up with only a faint glimmer of light when he sees Gabriel.  

 

“Gabriel.  You are here.  Lucifer said he thought you were alive.”

 

“Yup.  Lots of us popping up all over the place lately.  Look.  I gotta say.  Happy reunions and all, but frankly, you two are fucking ghastly and I have no idea what’s going on, so.  Start explaining.”  Gabriel’s voice is terse and he hasn’t lowered his blade yet.  What a simply fascinating turn of events.  Although it looks like bringing backup truly wasn’t necessary.  Gabriel could probably kill both of his elder brothers without even needing the blade at this point, from the looks of things.  But it’s never, never wise to underestimate Lucifer or Michael.

 

“We know as much as you do, probably,” Lucifer says, returning to Adam’s body.  He holds out Adam’s arm.  Michael wraps himself around it, with painful difficulty.

 

“Assume I know precisely nothing.  Seems like you two are BFFLs again, for the first time in a couple thousand years.  Let’s start there.”

 

Lucifer chuckles again.  “The Cage changed us.”

 

“You were in it for millennia beyond counting before this.”

 

“I was alone, then.”

 

“We fought,” Michael’s voice is almost a whisper.  “We fought endlessly.  Until there was nothing left to say, no further blows to exchange.”

 

“Didn’t think you’d run out of ideas after only a couple hundred years.”

 

“We ran out of - everything.”

 

Lucifer chimes in again.  “We just stopped, at the same time.  And understood futility for the first time.”

 

“Adam was still whole, then.  He was the one.  He had the idea.”  Michael reaches out to touch Lucifer’s grace where it shelters that misshapen dot of light.  Lucifer allows it.  Gabriel wants to turn away.

 

“Adam. Right.  Winchesters’ kid brother.  Is that him?  Looks like he’s in as good of shape as either of you?”

 

“Worse,” Michael says, sounding sorrowful.

 

“Adam said to use his soul, as a source of power.  To break out of the Cage.”

 

“Adam said this?  He looks like his days of saying fuckall are behind him, big bros.”

 

“We ignored him in the Cage,” Lucifer says.  “He meant little to us.  Truthfully, I think we only remembered he was with us at all after he spoke up.”

 

“He was already mad by then.”

 

“Yes.”  Lucifer’s and Michael’s grace are intertwined.  The intimacy is a little scandalous and a lot heartbreaking - Gabriel’s reminded of a time when he spied on his brothers’ future vessels, back when the Winchesters were children, clinging to each other in a hotel room, alone.  Lucifer continues talking.

 

“Yes.  He was already broken.  Damaged by our battles, our presence.  Broken by the pain he suffered.  But he still suggested it.  Michael was the one to do it, since he was better suited to take Adam as a vessel.  The effort… nearly destroyed them both.  But a hole in the cage was made.  I had to finish.  It took a great deal from me but I finished breaking out.  I kept illusions in place.  None knew we’d left.  I dragged both of them out and we… escaped.”

 

“And you’ve just been hangin out here in no man’s land ever since.”

 

Again, that ghastly laughter from Lucifer.  “Where would we go?  To Heaven?  Back to Hell?  We needed to recover.  There is nothing left of our strength.”

 

“You wouldn’t be welcomed in New Heaven, that’s for sure.”  Gabriel lowers his blade, finally, and looks down at the grass, shaking his head, unable to wrap his mind around it.  “Why, though.  Why this place.”

 

“I created this for Adam.  It soothes him.  It’s far easier to care for him and occupy his body when he is at peace,” Lucifer says, giving the tiny ball of light a gentle squeeze.  If Adam’s soul responds to the attention, Gabriel can’t tell.

 

“Does he even know what’s going on?” Gabriel asks, feeling nauseated by the whole scene.

 

“Sometimes.  There is little left of his consciousness, at present, although we think he may be healed eventually.”

 

The shade of Michael speaks again, or, well, whispers.  “We all have healed somewhat, even in the short time we’ve been out.  We were almost as nothing, when we first left.”

 

Gabriel straightens up, abruptly.  “Guys.  My brothers.  I can’t… I need to reflect on this.  I’m going.  I won’t... tell anyone except Castiel.”

 

They both summon the energy to scoff.  “Castiel?  The upstart little brother?”  Lucifer sneers.

 

“He’s come along.  You’d be shocked.  Almost as shocked as he’d be to see you.”  Gabriel draws a deep breath - damn these human habits and tells - and lets it out.  “You two… can’t do your old shit.  Ever again.  I can’t allow it.  If I leave you here, to yourselves… don’t ever make me regret it.  I cannot afford to regret this.”

 

Michael reaches out to touch Gabriel lightly.  He bears it with only the faintest recoil.  

 

“You needn’t worry about us.  You should have a care for what else is here.”

 

“My presence on earth will bring about the Antichrist again,” Lucifer says.  “And we’ve both sensed more.”

 

“Good tidings, indeed,” Gabriel can’t muster the sarcasm.  He hesitates.  “Take care, brothers.  I’ll be back.”  And he’s off, fleeing, leaving behind the scene of misery and strangeness.

 

\--------  
  
Kevin regrets asking.

 

There was nothing gained from asking.  Nothing’s changed except now he knows that Adam suffered unfathomably and is a wispy shadow of a soul, tied forever to the two archangels that destroyed him.  Gabriel had responded to his question curtly, briefly stating that his brothers were of no threat to anyone, and that Adam was lost forever.  The fact that even the capricious and otherwordly being is disturbed leaves Kevin even more distressed.  Adam’s condition must be awful.

 

Kevin’s asked about Adam, before, at the bunker, and got the usual guilty hedging, but managed to get a sense of the story.  Kevin and Adam, they weren’t dissimilar.  Two smart kids, raised by a single mom, leading ordinary lives until they were teenagers and then - well, how can you even put it into words?  None of it makes sense.  It doesn’t make sense.

 

He’s on the deck of the ferry, headed back to the mainland, staring into the dark water churning below.  There are kids on board, babies, making noise as they run around the deck, and when he looks at them he imagines himself or Adam as kids.  Small and innocent, running around playing and exploring and never imagining the horrors lying ahead.  They were sweet kids who grew up to be decent young men.  He doesn’t understand.  Why do kids like Adam and Kevin get caught up in these kinds of tragedies?  

 

The water doesn’t look as clear now, as it did on the way over to the island.  Kevin stares at it morosely, then pushes off the railing and happens to notice he’s still holding his book in his hand.  The one he’s now stolen from the library on the island.  Oops.

 

He stares at the book instead of the water.  On the cover is a hideous rendering of some kind of space vixen with a raygun, a vampire, and some alien structure.  It’s the ugliest book cover he’s ever seen and that was the main reason he’d picked it, because it made him snort in amusement.  One of the stories had been a fairly engrossing zombie apocalypse.  Kevin had enjoyed the unusual optimism of the story, given the subject matter. Then he’d overheard the tourists talking and promptly forgotten about the book altogether.

 

Now, he felt a tug in his brain - a gentle feeling that he was compelled to finish the story.  

 

He went out to the main deck, into the bright sunshine to be surrounded by the ambience of kids running around yelling, and read.

 

By the end of the story, the survivors had captured one of the zombies and killed it.  Not knowing what else to do with the corpse, they dissected it.  Just to understand.  The doctor among them made sense of the zombification process, how the bodies had been reanimated and why they hungered for the flesh of the living, and after they grasped that concept, everything that had previously been so scary and confusing suddenly made sense to them.  There was no point in asking why and chasing that ouroboros.  Why had their loved ones been turned into monsters?  Why do tumors grow until they kill a person?  Why are children sometimes born with bodies that are already dying?  There’s no why, is what the survivors decided.  Seeing HOW it all worked, how it had happened - that was all the sense there was, with tragedy.  And how you planned to move on.  “We’ll just ask how,” the survivors resolved.

 

Just ask how.

 

\--------  
  
In the Marianas Trench, rift worms sway in the current.  Gabriel envies them.  How blessed they are, to know nothing, feel nothing.  No loss, no fear, no uncertainty.

 

His brothers are out.  They’re like ghosts.  Lost, confused, weak.  Why were they permitted to leave the Cage?  Why were all of them coming back?  To what purpose?

 

Gabriel doesn’t know.

  
\--------  
  
“Oh, you found my book!”

 

Kevin jumps a little, looking over with nervous suspicion.  A man is standing near him, grinning in a way that makes him look worried and friendly at once.  He’s a small man, short and light-framed, with gray hair that curls slightly, a beard that hides a thin face and the brightest blue eyes that Kevin has ever seen.  

 

“I’m Chaz.  Chaz Kripke.  I uh, I contributed to that book.”  The man - Chaz - is holding his hand out.  Kevin stares blankly for a moment before shaking his hand.  

 

“Hi.  Uh.  Wow, really?  You wrote one of the stories…?

 

“Oh, well, a little.  I wrote that part  about the sexy trolls, at the beginning - but mainly I edited the whole thing.  I used to write a lot more, but I haven’t pushed out a book in about - six years, now?  But the royalties are still coming in, and I get asked to contribute to story collections, so.  You know.  It’s a living.”  The way the man talks makes Kevin think he must be a man battling supreme anxiety, and the way he looks and carries himself screams “trainwreck.”

 

Normally, Kevin tends to absorb anxiety from other people and take it into himself - he’s a natural worrier.  But he feels an odd sense of calm now.

 

“We all gotta make a living,” he says vaguely, looking from the book’s cover - it does say Chaz Kripke, as the editor, down at the bottom.  “What’d you write?”

 

“Lotta stuff.  Mostly scifi.  Most popular was “Ninja Princess from the Otherworld.”  You ever read it?”  Chaz looks both hopeful and resigned.  Kevin can’t quite bring himself to say that he wouldn’t touch a title like that with a ninety-yard pole.

 

“Oh - well, I didn’t read it yet, but I heard it was good.  That’s awesome, meeting the author... Maybe you can sign this book here?  I mean, it’s not the same, but it’s still a famous signature.”

 

Chaz’s face lights up and the sight of it cheers Kevin slightly.

 

“Oh - sure!  Here, I got a pen on me - ” Chaz signs the stolen library book enthusiastically.  “If you ever read anything else of mine, I hope you like it.  I always enjoyed creating them.”

 

“You stopped though?”

 

“I enjoyed the writing process - still do.  I still got stuff in notebooks, might use ‘em someday.  At some point I found out about fan fiction and I had this, this, epiphany I guess.  I loved the idea of people taking the ideas I gave them, and then - expanding it on their own.  Makes the original idea a living thing, open to so many interpretations…”

 

Chaz is saying something else but Kevin abruptly starts talking too.

 

“I think I’ve had an epiphany too,” he says, “from this book.”  

 

Chaz raises his eyebrows in surprise.  It makes his large blue eyes seem larger and bluer.

 

“Oh, uh - really?  From that book?”

 

“Yeah.”  Kevin feels the idea taking root as he speaks.  “In the one story, the one about the zombies?  All the survivors are so crushed, so ruined by the tragedy, and so overwhelmed by basically surviving the apocalypse, and they don’t know why it happened.  They lose so much time trying to understand why, and they never get an answer.  It’s not until they dissect one of the zombies and understand how their adversary functions that they feel like they get it.  They can’t keep thinking of why, why, why.  Sometimes there’s just no fucking answer.  There’s no reason.  You can only say, yup, that’s how it happened, now how am I gonna deal with it?”

 

Pleasant surprise and - warmth, or something, spreads over Chaz’s face.  “You got all that from that story?”

 

“Well, I mean, the message wasn’t subtle.  But yeah.  I mean.  Stuff happened and I used to ask why all the time, but I should have been thinking of how I was going to move forward.”

 

“Huh.  Well, that sounds like a good philosophy.  How are you going to move forward, then?”

 

“I think…”  Kevin takes a deep breath.  “I think - I’m gonna go back to school.  And I think I’m not going to wait until all this other shit goes away.  I’m going to figure out how to work with it, you know?  This is the situation I’ve got.  I can use that.”

 

Chaz is looking at him, and smiling slightly.  The expression seems fond, slightly proud, which is weird.  What made Kevin say all that to a total stranger, anyway?  Why is Chaz taking it in stride?

 

Suddenly suspicious and nervous, Kevin offers a brief prayer.

 

\--------

 

Gabriel isn’t really in the mood.  In fact he would absolutely rather ignore it, and sit here instead and sulk in the bottom of the ocean until either the world ends, or everything gets resolved.  But the nervous tone to Kevin’s prayer snaps him to alertness, and he arrives on the deck of the ferry moments later, about ten yards further down.

 

He strides towards the two men but slows as he approaches them.  The guy with Kevin.  Older - mddle-aged?  Definitely not a demon, or any other monster.  Not an angel, obviously.  But something’s weird.  Gabriel feels nearly positive he knows the man, but there’s some… cloudiness in place.

 

The guy looks over at Gabriel and waves cheerfully.  “Hello!” he says, and it’s two syllables of a very ordinary greeting but Gabriel’s hackles are up.  

 

He intends to confront the guy immediately.  Smirk and swagger and maybe a smear on the boat deck, if called for.  Because Gabriel’s brothers are hollow, broken shells of their former selves, and Gabriel doesn’t understand why it has to be this way, and he doesn’t know if he can help them, and it all leaves him feeling very uncharitable.

 

But the guy puts his hand warmly on Gabriel’s shoulder and weirdly enough, Gabriel doesn’t smite him on the spot.

 

(Although, at the glare he receives from the archangel, the guy does hastily remove his hand).

 

“Hey there.  It’s good to see you again.”

 

Gabriel’s eyes are suspicious slits.  “Do we know each other,” he inquires dangerously.

 

“Yup.  Been a long time, though.  I’m Chaz?  Chaz Kripke.”  

 

The name means nothing to him.  Kevin is watching them uncertainly.

 

“You look upset,” Chaz observes.

 

“Yeah,” Gabriel manages.  Who the hell is this guy?  Why is Gabriel not smiting the fuck out of him?

 

“What is it?”  Chaz prompts.

 

“Family problems,” Gabriel grinds out.

 

“Yeah?  That sucks.”

 

“My brothers are out of jail.  I haven’t seen them in so fucking long - not since the one tried to kill me - and I thought I’d be angry or worried because they’re basically criminals that want to set the world on fire, but I saw them and I just felt - sad.  So fucking sad.  They’re ghosts.  They’re pathetic.  They don’t know what to do with themselves and I don’t know what to do either.  I thought I took care of all of this when they got locked up but it’s even harder now and I have no idea why I’m even trying to deal with this.”

 

What.  Is happening.  Gabriel doesn’t spill his guts to people.  Not to anyone, and absolutely not to random assholes on random human boats, even if Gabriel knows he knows this guy and Chaz himself just confirmed it.  Who the fuck is he?!

 

“That’s rough, man,” Chaz says.  And he looks as though he means it, like it’s the saddest thing he’s ever heard, but also distant, like he can’t quite feel it.  “Well, families have problems.  Different people with different ideals, all close to one another… I think it’s good that you care so much though.  You always did, though, didn’t you?”  Again with the familiarity…

 

“You’ll figure it out.  I’m sure of it.  And for what it’s worth, I think it’s great you’re looking out for your buddy here.”  Chaz claps Kevin on the shoulder and the prophet also is squinting suspiciously at him.  

 

“Well, yeah.  I pretty much have to.”

 

“You have to?”  Chaz gives Gabriel an infuriatingly knowing look.

 

“We’re friends,” Kevin speaks up, sounding like Gabriel feels:bewildered.

 

“Good.  That’s good.  Well hey, guys, it’s been cool catching up.  But I can see you have a lot to talk about yourselves, so I’ll leave you alone.  If you ever get some free time, you ought to stop by St Ignace.  There’s another lost creature there that could use some guidance from guys like you who have it together.”

 

Gabriel and Kevin both snort derisively at that, but Gabriel also wonders.  “‘Lost creature?’  What conversation are we having here?”

 

But Chaz moves his hands and Kevin and Gabriel are both sort of shuffling away.  Gently dismissed.

 

“Glad you liked the book, Kevin.  See you around, maybe.”  Then he’s walking one way and they’re walking the other, disembarking, actually, because they’ve landed.

 

“How did that guy know my name…” Kevin’s mumbling.  He looks up at Gabriel.  “Did you know that guy?”

 

“What guy?  Whatchoo talkin’ bout, Kevvis?”  Chaz is already fading from his awareness, as though he never met the man.

 

“The guy we...were…” Kevin looks confused suddenly.  “I… what was I saying?”

 

“You said you read a great zombie book.  And that reminded me that we’re supposed to go to St. Ignace.”

 

Kevin gives him a weird look.  “How did that remind you of St Ignace?”

 

“It made a list once of places where you could survive a zombie apocalypse.”

 

“...Huh.  Good to know.”

 

\--------

 

At St. Ignace, they wander around for a while.  It’s a nice enough city.  Kevin’s been here a couple of times.  Mackinac, of course, and Castle Rock and the Museum of Ojibwa Culture.  

 

But they’re not here to browse, apparently.  Neither Gabriel nor Kevin retains a clear memory of what they’re doing in St. Ignace, but they both feel like this is where they’re supposed to be, and Gabriel thinks he’s looking for someone.  After they’ve walked for around fifteen minutes, the archangel visibly perks up like a bloodhound on the scent, grabs Kevin’s shoulder, and they vanish, only to reappear an instant later in a different location.

 

In that instant, Kevin sees another flash of - stuff.  It’s happened before.  An impression of blue, of eyes, of bells… he only sees it when Gabriel or Cas is around.  He hasn’t asked yet, but he wonders if this he’s somehow seeing the angels behind the human bodies.

 

He shakes off the disorientation and looks up to see a sign:  “Mystery Spot.”

 

“What, here?  No way, I read about this, this is where you fucked with Sam and Dean for like, a thousand Tuesdays, no way I’m going in there with you - ”

 

“It was a thousand and twelve Tuesdays.  And it’s not the same Mystery Spot.  Every state’s got one.  Kevvy, you should wear this.  It’ll bring out the color of your eyes!”  Gabriel’s at a souvenir stand, holding up a truly hideous tie-dye shirt with the words “Mystery Spot St Ignace” on it.

 

“Fuck no,” Kevin informs him.

 

“But Kev - ”

 

“Not for love or money.  Didn’t you have something to do here?”

 

They walk around the property, passing tourists standing on buildings designed to be optical illusions, giving the impression that they’re defying gravity.  When Kevin’s gaze lingers slightly too long on one particularly good illusion-structure, Gabriel nudges him.  

 

“You know, I could get you standing on the actual ceiling here if you wanted.  We could blow everyone’s minds, make a ton of money, retire to the Bahamas with some hot babes.  Or dudes, who look like Sam Winchester, if that’s more your thing.”

 

Kevin rolls his eyes and doesn’t even dignify that with a response.  “We’re here looking for someone, remember?  Do you ever stop just playing around?”

 

“Like you can talk!  When was the last time you had a job, ya big loafer!  Just mooching off those two dumbass underwear models that call themselves hunters!”

 

Kevin tries to shake the mental image of Dean and Sam modeling underwear.  “Well, actually.  Since you bring it up.  I’m planning to go to school again.  Back to college.  I think I can get a few scholarships off test scores… and... I know it’s not “prophet stuff,” really, but I was hoping you could maybe, like, hang around, and help keep demons and stuff away?  Because I really need to move on with my life, and -”

 

“‘Move on’?  You want me to be your personal bodyguard while you ‘move on’ from the one job you have?”  Gabriel’s derision is coming across loud and clear.  “Why do you think I even resurrected you in the first place?  For your charming personality and cute little butt?”

 

“Well - Gabriel, it’s not like I’ve even had anything to do as a prophet since - wait, you brought me back?  That was you?  I thought you said you didn’t know who!”

 

“I just let you believe that,” Gabriel snaps.  “Yeah, I did.  I went to the Veil and found you crying and hugging your knees and hiding from demons and I dragged your ass out and resurrected you, so that you could get propheting and help me figure out what I’m supposed to do about this giant clusterfuck going on in Heaven!  Haven’t exactly been holding up your end, have you?”

 

“I haven’t even felt any - any compulsion to do prophet shit!  I can’t turn it on and off myself!”

 

“Not my fault.  And regardless, my responsibilities are to the prophet, not to Kevin Stupidfuck Tran.”

 

“Well, then, maybe you can consider this backpay for dropping the ball in a major fucking way before, because I sure as fuck didn’t have a helpful guardian archangel for years while leviathan and demons and angels were all chasing after me!”

 

“I was DEAD, asshole!”

 

“Not my fault,” Kevin mimics sarcastically.  He can see that Gabriel is getting seriously riled now, but Kevin can’t bring himself to care.  Gabriel’s been fucking around for long enough; it’s high time the frivolous bastard started committing to his causes.  “Eight years of school is a drop in the bucket to an angel anyway!”

 

“You think I owe you.  A miserable little shit like you, a fucking insect, and you think I owe you a single fucking thing?!”

 

“Oh, of course,” Kevin says bitterly, “this Mystery Spot ought to be reminder enough that you’re just an asshole with a magnifying glass and an anthill.  All that shit about giving a fuck about humanity was just a lot of fucking noise, huh?”

 

“I sacrificed myself for humanity.  I gave up my brothers for humanity.  I loved them - they fucking destroyed themselves, and I helped them do it.  What more proof do I fucking need?  Fuck, I even resurrected you, didn’t I?  All you had to do was figure out what to do next!”

 

“You didn’t do the whole noble sacrifice thing just for humanity to keep serving heaven, did you really??  Let us have our free will already!”

 

And all at once the fight goes out of Gabriel and he blinks stupidly at Kevin.  

 

“Pigs, sussing out truffles of God’s will,” Gabriel says, looking thunderstruck.  “This is the truffle, isn’t it?  You’ve been sussing them out all along.”  

 

Kevin throws his hands up in the air in frustration as he steps past another haphazard building.

 

“Is that supposed to fucking mean something?  That was literally the most stupid, nonsensical thing - ”

 

Kevin’s rage abruptly vanishes.  Gone, forgotten, and he shuts up in the middle of his sentence. He’d stepped past that building and been confronted with the vision of blue, of eyes, of flames - but it’s different from what he’s seen with Gabriel.  Different from Gabriel - but very familiar from half-remembered nightmares.  Sam, the feeling of being burned alive, months wandering the grey Veil…

 

There, on the other side of the building, is a man, unfamiliar to Kevin’s eyes.  But that flash of - of whatever it was, makes it unavoidably obvious that he is face-to-face with Ezekiel, better known as Gadreel.   
  
\--------  
  


Gabriel finds himself looking at Gadreel for the second time this year, the first being Kevin’s nightmare of dying.  

 

In the flesh, he looks exactly as miserable as in the flashback.  Gadreel is not wearing Sam Winchester now, of course, but a tall and handsome blond-ish man who looks sad and confused.  He’s standing next to a souvenir booth, wearing the same hideous tie-dye shirt that Kevin point-blank refused to wear.  Gabriel personally thinks the shirt takes any kind of intimidating edge off the angel that he may have ever had, but Kevin disagrees.

 

The prophet’s eyes have flown open wide, terrified, and he’s hyperventilating, visibly leaning back and actually clutching at Gabriel.  It’s kinda sweet, in a way - Kevin really trusts him.

 

“No.  No.  No.  He can’t, I, Gabriel, please, he’s the one, he, please,” Kevin’s babbling a little, shaking, and it kind of surprises Gabriel.  The kid mostly acts annoyed when demons find him, or sad; and he literally just finished shouting insults at an archangel, but this one lower-level angel sends him off into a panic, just because Gadreel happened to be the one to actually smite him.  Maybe the memory of dying is stronger with Kevin than he even realizes.

 

“Cool your shit,” Gabriel tells him, turning to Gadreel, who looks at him in in blank shock.  “So, you work here?  You know you gotta make at least a tiny effort to look happy on the job, right, because you’re not really selling the fun - kid, what is your - ”

 

Kevin is shaking hard now, totally freaking out, and actually has tears in his eyes.  A quick peek at his conscious thoughts reveals that he is completely not in the moment - he’s seeing that angel in Sam’s body, reaching out for his face.

 

Gabriel rolls his eyes.  “Okay.  Okay, kiddo, just - here.”  He almost reaches for Kevin’s face but catches himself at the last moment and snaps his fingers instead.  Instantly, Kevin’s eyes close and he slumps over, unconscious.  He would have fallen to the ground except Gabriel catches him in his grace, wrapping him up, and holds him upright, slightly off the ground.  He makes a minimal effort to make his grace feel warm and safe.  “You’re dreaming of puppies, okay?  They’re totally cute.”

 

Kevin’s demeanor relaxes slightly, and his breathing deepens.  Gabriel sighs dramatically and turns back to Gadreel, who looks guilty, and yeah, Gabriel’s getting sick of seeing guilt on everyone’s face now.  He needs to go back to Balthazar after this, have a night out with a guy who has no regrets.  

 

“Okay, Gaddy.  Sorry about that.  He’s high-strung.”

 

“He’s alive… you’re alive?  Lord Gabriel… how did we all…”

 

“It’s a miracle, buddy.”  Gabriel summons a candy bar and takes a bite, not bothering to offer one to Gadreel.  These habits from his centuries as the Trickster are hard to shake.  “You really got a job here?  Janitoring’s better.  Hell, even Castiel managed to work at a gas station.  You’re never gonna get ahead at this rate.”

 

“They had just lost two employees.  They eloped,” Gadreel says vaguely, totally ignoring the kids who swipe Mystery Spot stickers from his booth.  “I just… arrived here, and they pressed me into service, and I didn’t know what else to do…”  He looks wretchedly over at Kevin.  The prophet seems to be enjoying his puppy dream.  “I don’t understand.  I died… it was meant to be my penance.  I was at peace.”

 

“Boy, do I know that feel.”  And he does.  Dying had felt so right, at the time, and even though he’d felt heartbroken over Lucifer being the one to do it, Gabriel had still felt… not exactly happy, but at peace.  And then he woke up and found that the universe wasn’t done giving him shit to do.

 

“Well, Gadreel, I’m going to skip through several hours of exposition and just tell you that there’s a few of us back.  Me, for one.  Balthazar.  Samandriel.  M- some others.  None of us know why.  I’ve been mulling it over for a while and have just recently decided I don’t care why.  I’m back, and now I’ve got plans, and shit to do.”

 

The angel doesn’t look like he’s following the rushed exposition.  He looks just as lost, and keeps staring at Kevin.

 

“I hurt him.  I took the body of one that he loved - a dear friend - and killed him.  It was a form of betrayal.  One of Lucifer’s sins.”

 

Hmm.  That’s right.  Gabriel’s going to have to navigate a lot of feelings, there, if Gadreel’s really going to help him with Michael and Lucifer.  Maybe this thing here, this Gadreel vs. Kevin thing, will serve as an example.

 

“He’ll forgive you, I think,” Gabriel says, gesturing to the prophet.  “Yeah, he freaked out a little bit.  But believe me.  You were in the bunker, right?  So you saw.  You may have been the last one to screw him over, but you weren’t the first, not by a long shot.  He’s gotten past it.  No, stop with the sad face, he has.  He’s back to having a big crush on Sam Winchester already.  Put it all behind him.  I think it’s groovy.  We should follow his lead.”

 

Gadreel looks doubtfully at the prophet, peacefully sleeping in his cocoon of Gabriel’s grace.  “He will not forgive me.  He’s filled with rage and fear - and rightly so.  I have wronged him.”

 

“Yeah, you did.  So did I.  So did Castiel, and the Winchesters, and a few others.  it doesn’t matter.  We don’t need to dwell on the fact that he’s pissed off and scared; that’s already done.  We need to figure out how we’re going to make this work.”

 

“I can never make it up to him.  To any of them.”  

 

“Gadreel.”  The angel tears his gaze from the prophet to look over at Gabriel.  “The number of people who are dead, or who have only suffered, because of me, is beyond counting.  You made a mistake.  I made a choice.  It’s done.  Now - we just need to move on.  I think I know how.”

 

The universe’s first chump, the saddest fuckup in the Host of Heaven, looks up at him, waiting to hear what he has to say.  

 

“Come with us, Gadreel.  I need help with a lot of shit.  Heaven is forty different kinds of fucked up at the moment.  The Antichrist might be back.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Winchesters are fucking something up right now, like, setting the Darkness free or something.”  

 

They both chuckle a little at the absurdity, but it does remind Gabriel that maybe he better look in on what those muttonheads have been up to lately.

 

“Anyway, the best person for the job is another Class-A fuckup.  You and me.  Because fucked up before and we’re ready to move forward.  That’s how we get shit done.  Let’s take this second chance and use it.”  
  
\--------  
  
Garth is adorable.  Kevin hadn’t really been able to appreciate it before, in those dark times when the ashes of his old life were still smoldering bitterly.  But now, in this new second life, he can enjoy the company of possibly the sweetest and cutest person to ever walk the earth.  Becoming a werewolf has changed nothing in this pure soul.

 

They’re wandering Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland, in Frankenmuth, at Kevin’s suggestion.  In August. Garth is exclaiming over EVERYTHING, thrilled by the gimmicky store/tribute to Christmas, as Kevin had known he would be.  The werewolf’s basket is already heaped with stuff that he proclaims will be a big hit at his church, as well as a few gifts for his wife Bess, and three “baby’s first Christmas” ornaments.  Kevin surreptitiously goes to fetch a full-size cart, wondering if he’ll meet Bess and the little ones someday.

 

When they’ve finished going through every single display in the enormous, warehouse-sized store, Kevin helps Garth load up his slightly-improved car (“Had to get something reliable - I’m a family man now, you know?”) and they go across the street to Sullivan’s Black Forest Brew Haus & Grill.  Garth orders a lot of steak and the sausage sampler.  Kevin gets the arugula salad.

 

“So your new school is near here, right?” Garth asks, mouth full of food.

 

Kevin takes a swallow of his Vander Mill Cider.  Not bad.  “Sorta near here.  It’s about two hours west.  Grand Valley.”  

 

Garth smiles, his whole face lighting up warmly.  “Glad you’re going.  Yeah, my days at dental school… good times.  Good times.”  He nudges Kevin.  “Make sure you remember to actually study.  I had crazy times at dental school too, haha!  Dentists know how to par-tay!  ‘Course, I can’t go back to those wild young days anymore.  I’m a family man now.”  He keeps saying that, proudly.

 

Kevin returns the smile.  “I was never much of a partier.  Anyway, I gotta really hit the books.  Pre-vet is gonna be hard enough as it is; trying to combine that with cult studies with Sam back in the bunker doesn’t leave a lot of time for keggers.”  Not that Gabriel hasn’t pled the case; the archangel has spent a lot of arguments trying to convince Kevin that a kegger doesn’t count as wasted time if he can literally make time stop to accommodate it.

 

Garth looks surprised.  “You’re still studying the occult stuff?  I thought - well, I guess I figured that school was gonna be - you leavin’ the life.”

 

“Nah.  Actually.”  Kevin plays with the necklace he still wears every day.  “I’m actually doing this to - improve the life.  Trying something different.  You know.  With both of those studies combined, maybe I could… you know, help you someday.  If you got hurt as a werewolf.  Not a lot of doctors out there who can help werewolves.  Or, not just you even, but also others.  It might not end up being helpful, but I just want to try it, see how it works.  I think it’s time we all saw about changing things, and this could be how it starts.”

 

During Kevin’s awkward explanation, Garth’s grin has been getting wider and wider until he finally gets up from the table, and walks around to drop into Kevin’s side of the booth and hug him fiercely.  

 

“Kevin, that’s so great!  I’m real happy for you, buddy - and, not going to lie, but you being able to treat me, maybe my Bess or the kids, if something happens - ”

 

Kevin squirms and awkwardly tries to hug Garth back while simultaneously trying to push him off.  “Garth, c’mon man, people are gonna think I just proposed to you.”

 

Garth claps his back a couple of times and smiles knowingly.  “Not a hugger.  You’ve been hanging around those Winchesters too much.”  His tone is warm though, and he pulls away.  

 

“...But yeah, I mean, that’s what I’d like to do, eventually.  You know you and Bess could always come by.”

 

“We will, for sure.  To see Dr. Tran.”  Garth sounds proud of him, and Kevin can’t quite not smile at hearing that.  The werewolf takes another sausage from his platter.  “Yeah, I think you’re right.  Things aren’t the same anymore.  The supernatural world is changing a little, definitely not the same as when I was starting out hunting.  Not like I’ve been in the loop much lately.”

 

“That’s kind of what Sam and Dean think, too.”

 

“Wonder why?”

 

“Don’t need to wonder why.  Stuff happens.”  Kevin takes another drink of the cider and resolves to buy a bunch to bring back.  “All we gotta do is figure out how we’re gonna deal with it.”

 

“Yeah, I kinda stick to that idea myself,” Garth says, then glances up at Kevin.  “Speaking of ‘how,’ though, what’s this I’ve been hearing about - the Legion?  The Winchesters worried about that?”

 

“They worry about everything.  But they don’t need to.  Gabriel’s on it.”

 

\--------

 

Gabriel has homes, lots of them.  He’s partial to all of them, for one reason or another, though he hasn’t had occasion to visit the ones in Antarctica, the Marianas Trench, or the dark side of the moon lately.  Not much, anyway.  
  
His latest real-estate acquisition is a shared home – it’s really more his roommate’s house than his, though Gabriel isn’t one to dwell on details like that, especially not when it’s time to decide what show to watch or whether leopard-print is a good choice of décor.    
  
In any case, there’s a farmhouse now, just outside the city limits of Neighbor, Michigan, with a side-building on the property that serves as a veterinary clinic.  Most of the time, Dr. Tran tends to the local pets and farm critters.  His mother’s refrigerator is not yet fully papered over with newspaper clippings, business cards and awards; but Kevin’s practice is still fairly new.  Plenty of time.    
  
In the evenings, sometimes, creatures arrive, not toted in any pet carriers, nor in the back of pickup trucks or trailers.  The creatures hobble in, seeking aid.  Usually, they receive it.  Occasionally, some benighted idiot tries to kidnap or kill the veterinarian in spite of the necklace he wears.  These fools get fried out of existence with little fuss or fanfare.  
  
Over the door inside Dr. Tran’s private office, out of sight of customers, is a small sign: “Ask How.”  This is the only piece of decoration in the entire building that is never defaced by visiting archangels.

 

There’s only the one archangel that visits, of course, but other celestial beings have been by.  The one in the trench coat and tie is always welcome, goes without saying.  There’s a British-accented lech and his kept twink who stop over once in a while; and a tall, serious-looking one, who never fully stops being amazed and somewhat reverent at the fact that he is trusted to be in this home.

 

A room is kept with two twin beds, neatly made, for a pair of hunters that come by as often as their lives allow.  
  
For his part, Gabriel doesn’t require a bed, though if he did, he’d obviously choose a huge circular one with the aforementioned leopard print, silk sheets and a mirror overhead.  But regardless of his preferences, there’s a bed in a spare room that’s always made up for him as well, and he stays in it every so often on principal.  
  
It’s his favorite house for the moment, for sure.

 

 


End file.
